Essar Steel's plate products manufactured at its plate mill have been approved by the Indian Navy and the company has received a prestigious order from Mazagaon Dock (MDL) to supply 13,000 tonnes of heavy plates to build state-of-the-art ships for defence.
The plate mill became the first primer plate producer in the country to be recognised for indigenous development of steel for building ships for the Indian Navy. A stringent mill audit of Essar Steel's recently commissioned wide-plate mill was conducted by teams from the Directorate of Naval Architecture (DNA), Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) and the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) of the Ministry of Defence. This is the first time that MDL has placed an order for such a large consignment of steel plates from a domestic steel mill. Set up at a cost of around Rs.2,000 crore, the plate mill has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes. Equipped with latest equipment and controls, the mill is capable of producing 5-metre wide plates conforming to global standards.
The mill is capable of producing plates of thickness ranging from 5 mm to 150 mm, width from 900 mm to 4,900 mm and length 3m to 25m — all of which are import-substitution products.
The plates find applications in diverse segments, including defence, oil and gas, boilers and pressure vessels, heavy duty earth-moving machines, wind towers, mine protective vehicles and construction. The plate mill has approvals from some of the world's leading ship-building, boilers, and yellow goods manufactures and according to a company spokesman, the export market is attractive.
