SAIL-Bhilai steel to prevent Nepal’s landslides

A file picture of Gabion wall

Team News Riveting

Raipur, June 9

SAIL- Bhilai Steel Plant’s Wire Rod Mill (WRM) had rolled out SAE 1008 grade wire rods and dispatched to neighbouring Nepal to facilitate the Himalayan Nation to build Gabion walls to prevent landslides.

A full rake comprising of 43 Wagons with 2700 Tonnes of SAE 1008 grade wire rods produced in WRM was dispatched to Nepal Wednesday. The rake was flagged off by Anjani Kumar, Executive Director (Works) in the presence of senior officers of the Plant and members of the Wire Rod Mill Collective.

Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), an arm of SAIL, had been traditionally rolling Plain wire rods and TMT coils from the SMS1-BBM route. After the closure of SMS1- BBM route, this is the first time that Plain Wire rods of Quality SAE 1008 has been rolled in WRM from cast billets produced in the modern Steel Melting Shop 3, i.e. through the Continuous Casting (CCS) route.

One more unique feature of the coils is that each and every coil is labelled with QR code having information like – Heat Number, Coil Number, Quality, Section, Date and Shift of rolling. All these information are unique to each coil. With this labelling WRM has been able to fulfil requirement of SAIL’s Marketing Wing, CMO for proper labelling and marking of coils. This initiative of labelling is the first step to the Mill’s Coil Yard Management System Project.

Train to Nepal: The rake being flagged off in Bhilai


The SAE1008 wire rods shall be used by the Wire Drawing Units for making GI wires. Half of the material shall be galvanized for further use. The wire drawn shall be used for making of Gabion box that are used for arresting landslides in hilly terrain. With the boxes, Gabion walls can be created that will act as a barrier to prevents soil erosion in coast and embankment stabilization thus preventing sliding and washouts.

According to a report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization published in 2011, Nepal has one of the highest fatalities from landslides in the world. Between 1972 and 2016, a total of 5,190 people lost their lives in 3,419 landslide events on record.

In 2020 alone, 243 have died and 51 are missing. This is the second highest of confirmed casualties on record in the past 10 years, and nearly three times higher than 2019.

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