The members of the Board of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) approved projects worth over Rs. 8,000 crore, including in-principle approval for hot metal capacity expansion of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) to 4.5 million tonnes at a cost of Rs. 7,668 crore, at their last meeting held earlier this week.
RSP is basically a bulk supplier of special products like electrical steel sheets, spiral welded pipes, plates and other steel items for Defence, tin plates, etc. Modernisation & expansion of RSP will help to maximise production of these items.
The expansion of RSP involves installation of new production facilities including blast furnace, 7-metre tall coke oven battery, sinter machine, converter with slab caster, a plate mill to produce 4.3-metre wide plates, a 1.8 lakh-tonne per annum CRNO steel complex and 6-hi reversing mill, among other facilities. RSP's Cold Rolling Mill and finishing lines of Hot Strip Mill will also be revamped/upgraded as part of this plan.
The SAIL Board also gave the final go-ahead for order placement for the project of rebuilding of RSP's Coke Oven Battery # 4 at an estimated cost of nearly Rs. 230 crore to make it pollution compliant for achieving emission standards as per norms of the Central Pollution Control Board. The four packages under this project, including the rebuilding of battery proper to MECON Ltd at a cost of around Rs. 154 crore, have been approved. Another project approved for RSP is for uprating of its Turbo Blower # 5 by M/s MAN Turbo of Germany, the orginal equipment manufacturer, at an estimated cost of Rs. 47 crore.
Besides the above, the SAIL Board also gave final approval installation of Main Step Down Substation-V & Transmission Network at Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) at an estimated cost of around Rs. 126 crore. This facility will be required to evacuate power from BSP's 2x250 MW Power Plant-3 being set up by NTPC-SAIL Power Co. Ltd.
All existing MG sets at BSP will also be replaced at a cost of around Rs. 48 crore, as per another Board approval granted the same day.