Electrosteel Castings, the Rs 557-crore pipe maker, is likely to take over a closed steel firm in the vicinity of its Khardah plant, near Kolkata. This follows the request of the state finance minister to the Electrosteel management to revive "at least" one closed steel unit.
Buoyed by Electrosteel's recent achievement of opening a decade-long closed firm, Calcutta Steel Company, West Bengal finance minister Asim Dasgupta urged the pipe maker on Saturday to "acquire at least one closed unit in the Barrackpore industrial belt."
The minister promised that the government would extend its hand to support the company in its efforts to revive a firm by sharing half of the loan of the closed firm, exempting some taxes and duties and providing part of the required capital expenditure.
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Reacting to the minister's proposal, company officials said they were "open to the idea. " " If we find something that gels well with our business activities, we may go ahead," they added.
Obviously, Electrosteel will seek expert's opinion before finalising acquisition of a closed unit as it sought views of Ernst & Young prior to the take over of Calcutta Steel.
The Kejriwals-controlled company is investing Rs 20 crore for installation of machinery required for manufacturing state-of-the-art pipe fittings in Calcutta Steel. It will have a 50,000 tonne capacity of pipe fittings and allied products annually. Calcutta Steel may be merged with Electrosteel in near future.
Electrosteel has just invested Rs 50 crore for setting up a small diameter ductile iron (DI) unit at the Khardah plant. With this, the company's investment reached Rs 200 crore over the past couple of years which raised the production capacity from 90,000 tonne to 1,70,000 tonne. The small diameter DI pipe unit with a capacity of 50,000 tonne was inaugurated on Saturday.
The pipes have been designed to ensure that they do not contaminate the environment. The plant will manufacture DI pipes of diameters ranging from 80 mm to 300 mm using modern technology.
The new plant is also equipped with energy optimising furnaces where the products of combustion are propelled with sequential firing mode through sensors. The entire manufacturing process is remote controlled to manufacture with perfect accuracy.