Team News Riveting
Raipur, May 30
NMDC Steel Plant (NSP) is set to blow in the blast furnace to facilitate commissioning of its greenfield steel plant at Nagarnar in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district by mid of June.
Set up by the NMDC Steel Limited (NSL), the demerged company of country’s mining major NMDC Limited, NSP aims to produce 3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of high-quality hot rolled coils, plates, and sheets annually, using state-of-the-art technology while achieving the highest level of energy efficiency. The plant is coming up at Nagarnar, about 350 km from Chhattisgarh capital.
“I think that we should be able to blow in (blast furnace) around June 15, 2023, and we should be able to get process the hot metal into steel in the SMS and then roll it to get the hot roll coils by end of June so we have a clear visibility now and we are confident that by end of June we will be able to roll out the coils,” Amitava Mukherjee, Chairman-cum-Managing Director (Additional Charge) and Director (Finance) of NMDC Limited, said in an investors’ conference call. Mukherjee is also holding additional charge of CMD, NSL.
“So, this plant will be commissioned in June end that is for sure because all the ancillary plants now have been commissioned both the coke oven batteries, the central plant, the power blowing station, and the oxygen plant all of them have been commissioned and are already producing. We are already producing and selling coke and blast furnace refurbishment is on,” Mukherjee said.
Since the NSP has not been commissioned, the NMDC Limited has right now booked all the capital expenditure (capex) into the capital work in progress and whatever coal it is buying to run the coke oven plant is also being booked into capital work in progress as the sale of coal is being credited to the capital work in progress. It is reducing the work in progress. “It will get commissioned within the next one month and the capex till date I think is around Rs 22,935 crore so approximately Rs 23,000 crore as of date which includes the amount of coal that we have bought and less the amount of coke that we have sold,” Mukherjee added.
NMDC Limited will feed NSP from its mines located in Dantewada district. Mukherjee said the NMDC Limited had reached a long-term agreement with NMDC Steel Limited for the same. “Naturally, it will be viable for NMDC Steel Limited to buy from us only because of logistic cost and because of the geographical location of it and 3-million-ton plant at 1.8 tonnes of iron ore per ton of steel we should be selling around 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of iron ore per annum when the plant is on full capacity,” Mukherjee added.
