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Bhilai Steel sets new records

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BS Reporter Kolkata/ Raipur

With its best-ever performance in the annual hot metal, crude steel and saleable steel production, Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) is all set to share 45 per cent of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL)'s total profit in the financial year 2007-08.

"In the last fiscal, BSP accounted for 45 per cent of SAIL's total profit. This year also, we expect to maintain," BSP Managing Director R Ramaraju said.

BSP continues to be among the top entities of SAIL.

BSP ended fiscal 2007-08 by crossing the five million tonne mark in the production of hot metal as well as in crude steel for the second time. The plant had earlier crossed the 5 mn.t. hot metal production target for the first time in fiscal 2005-06.

 

During 2007-08, BSP achieved the best-ever annual production of 5.268mn.t hot metal, surpassing its earlier best performance besides producing 5.054mn.t. crude steel and 4.427 mn.t. saleable steel.

This works out to 112.4 per cent, 129 per cent and 140 per cent of the rated capacity respectively.

While all previous records of finished rails and plates, merchant products and wire rods production have been smashed, a significant achievement of BSP in 2007-08 was the quantum jump in the production of value added special steel products and development of new product grades, Ramaraju said.

Several strategies were adopted for enhancing performance and to provide a cutting edge to the organization during the year, leading to growth.

These include maximizing asset utilization, a higher Finished Steel component in Saleable Steel at 81.6 per cent, registering a growth of 6.6 per cent over last year and greater thrust on value addition of products like gradual switch over to higher grade, i.e. Fe-500 for both TMT Bars and Rods.

According to Ramaraju, 2007-08 once again demonstrated ability to set new records, like its merchant mill of 1960's vintage which surpassed 700,000 ton mark for the first time since inception, against the annual rated capacity of 500,000t.

Plate Mill crossed its annual business plan target of 1.25 mn.t. on March 20, 2008, or 1.12 lakh ton more than the previous best annual production.

The production of rails was also the best-ever as the plant rolled out more long rails from its state of the art Long Rail complex "� 197,708 ton of 26 metre rails and 101,104 ton of long rails in lengths of 130m and 260m.

The Worli-Bandra sea-link, Jammu-Udhampur rail-link, the new airport in Delhi, indigenously-built warships of Indian Navy and Suzlon windmills were among projects and equipment produced with BSP steel, he claimed.

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First Published: Apr 17 2008 | 12:00 AM IST

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