Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) continued with its robust performance as it posted a record saleable steel production of 4.08 million tonnes (MT) during the first four months of the current financial year. This marked a 10% growth over saleable steel production in April-July 2005. The average capacity utilisation of the SAIL plants during the first four months of 206-07 was 110%.
Production by SAILÔÇÖs integrated steel plants at 3.94 million tonnes was up by about 3.5 lakh tonnes compared to last year. Rourkela Steel Plant put up a strong performance with additional output of about 2 lakh tonnes of saleable steel compared to last year. The speciality steels plants of SAIL produced 1.4 lakh tonnes of saleable steel during this period. This was 30,000 tonnes more than the production during the corresponding period last year (CPLY).
Major techno-economic parameters, too, showed substantial improvement during April-July 2006 over CPLY. Energy consumption reduced by 1% while production through the continuous casting route increased by 8.5%.
Keeping pace with production, overall sales by the company rose by about 9 lakh tonnes during April-July 2006. With export volumes up only marginally at 1.7 lakh tonnes, compared to 1.6 lakh tonnes during the same period last year, growth in the domestic market has been sharper.
In line with SAILÔÇÖs Corporate Plan target of producing 22.5 million tonnes of hot metal, projects valued at over Rs. 17,000 crore are presently in various stages of implementation in the companyÔÇÖs plants/mines.