Team News Riveting
Raipur, October 6
SAIL- Bhilai Steel Plant is proud of having provided the best and desired grades of steel for the Indian Railways, for dams, bridges and skyscrapers and for critical and important projects of national importance in defence, energy sector, space exploration etc.
In line with its aggressive product development strategy, BSP has been developing new grades in special steel category, thereby putting SAIL-BSP in a strong position vis-à-vis competition, and at the same time supporting the Government of India’s special emphasis and thrust on Manufacturing and Make in India and import substitution.
One major contribution in this regard has been production of high strength anti-submarine warship grade plates for use by Indian Navy. While the Plant has been producing ship building grade plates for several decades including plates for export to European ship building industry, the DMR 249 A warship grade plates that the Plant has been producing for Indian Navy has been used in building the hull of India’s first indigenously made aircraft carrier INS Vikrant and other class of smaller warships, including anti-submarine stealth warships including INS Kiltan, INS Kamorta, INS Kadmat etc. These warship grade plates were earlier being imported from Russia.
The DMR 249 Grade-A plates in thickness of 12 to 20 mm being produced at Bhilai Steel Plant’s modern steel making facility is a very high grade of steel with minute control on metallurgy of steel to ensure the desired quality, which is required for thicker plates. The warship grade plates rolled in the Plant’s Plate Mill are subjected to rigorous inspection procedures. Besides the Plate Mill Team, the Plant’s Quality Dept and its Research & Control Lab, Instrumentation Dept and other shops are closely involved in ensuring that all desired quality parameters are met.
While the regular ship-building plates produced by BSP for manufacture of commercial ships have certification from Lloyds Register Asia (LRA), American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and DetNorskeVeritas (DNV), the naval grade DMR 249 A plates are inspected by the QAE (Naval), i.e. Quality Assurance Establishment (Naval) that is authorised by the Indian Navy to carry out inspection of naval grade plates.
About 1700 Tonnes of DMR 249 A grade plates rolled in Plate Mill in the month of Oct 2021 are now being physically inspected by personnel from QAE (Naval). The entire inspection procedure is being digitally viewed by senior officers of Indian Navy’s QAE including Rear Admiral, Sanjeev Sharma at their respective outstation offices.
With the Indian Navy having undertaken an ambitious programme of expansion of its fleet of warships, SAIL-Bhilai has been producing and supplying DMR 249 A warship grade plates for Indian Navy on regular basis. SAIL-BSP has so far supplied over 30,000 Tonnes (T) of the warship grade DMR 249 A grade plates to the state owned ship builders, including Mazagon Dock Ltd, Mumbai, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata and Cochin Shipyard etc.
It may be recalled that armed with the latest IRS (Indian Registrar of Shipping) certification, BSP has also been supplying special grade ship-building grade plates to Hindustan Shipyard Limited for manufacture of special type of diving support vessels for Indian Navy.
