The Visakhapatnam steel plant - Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd has achieved turnover of Rs 12,781 crore during 2016-17 despite sluggish market conditions against the figure of Rs 12,281 crore during the previous year.

Addressing senior executives on Wednesday in the plant, Chairman and Managing Director P. Madhusudan underscored the need to reorient efforts, improve effectiveness of daily work management and contribute significantly to meet the target during 2017-18.

He said that though RINL had made significant strides in all areas of operation and marketing, the increase of coking coal and iron ore prices and other inputs had a significant impact on the performance of the company. He exhorted employees to make greater efforts and stressed the need to ramp up production, achieve the rated capacity from the new units and cut losses through increase in volume of operation.

He said digital payments and e-tendering brought about improvement in the performance of the company. He said the plant achieved growth of 11 per cent in hot metal production, 10 per cent in liquid Steel, 16 per cent in finished steel and 10 per cent in saleable steel.

Another notable achievement was that production from wire rod mill-2 recorded growth of 43 per cent. Gross sinter production touched 6 million tonne mark, marking growth of 5 per cent.

The exports amounted to Rs 1,048 crore during 2016-17.

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