The Hindu Business Line : RINL firms up plans to boost liquid steel capacity

Kolkata, Jan. 18 To ensure sustained profitability, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) must ramp up its liquid steel production capacity to 16 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by the year 2020, according to Mr P.K. Bishnoi, Chairman and Managing Director of RINL.

Speaking to newspersons after the conclusion of a meeting of the Executive Council of the Institute for Steel Development & Growth, Mr Bishnoi said RINL was in possession of land that would be required for expansion of capacity.

“Some steel plants are not able to come up owing to non-availability of land. That’s not the case with us and we have enough land to meet the requirements of our expansion plans. The Government, too, has declared that iron ore would be made available to all steel plants that require it,” he said.

Mr Bishnoi said plans have been firmed up to augment the liquid steel capacity of RINL from the current 3.5 mtpa at 6.3 mtpa by February 2010 at an estimated investment of Rs 10,000-12,000 crore.

Further, following repairs and optimisation of the capacity of the blast furnaces – at an additional investment of Rs 1,000 crore – the capacity of the blast furnaces would go up by 1 mtpa. As such, by end-2010, RINL’s liquid steel capacity would go up to 7.3 mtpa, he said.

According to him, RINL was studying the possibility of setting up a silico ferro-manganese processing unit at an investment of Rs 100 crore.

Mineral linkages abroad

Steps were also being taken to establish mineral linkages abroad.

RINL was looking at limestone mines in Oman even as an Expression of Interest has been made with regard to a 2.4 billion-tonne iron ore deposit in the west coast of Canada.

RINL had earlier applied to Governments of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh for allocation of iron ore mines.

However, its applications have been rejected and the company has applied for review of the same, Mr Bishnoi said.