With Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) dilly-dallying on the divestment of Salem Steel Plant, Jindal Stainless, the lone bidder for the unit, is putting its alternative projects on the fast track.
Jindal sources said that in the interim period while SAIL was taking time to take a decision on divestment, Jindal would step up work at its other projects.
One of the projects being considered was increasing capacity of its cold rolling capacity. Presently, Jindal has a cold rolling facility in Hissar with a capacity of 90,000 tonne.
However, the company was planning to increase capacity of this facility as it happens to be the most value added segment.
The options for increasing capacity being weighed were, de-bottlenecking and adding fresh capacity.
Sources said, if, the Salem divestment comes through then Jindal would be comfortable with de-bottlenecking, as Salem had a cold rolling capacity of 70,000 tonne.
However, if the Salem divestment did not fructify, then Jindal would add fresh capacity and take the capacity to 100,000 tonne. Sources said the company was doing its homework now and by the next 1-2 months would come to a decision.
While de-bottlenecking would not require any investment, adding fresh would require substantial investment. Jindal sources, however, could not quanitify the investment for fresh capacity.
The other project, which was being put on fast track, was the ferro chrome project. Sources said, we are finalising suppliers for the project.
The new ferro chrome project would add 130,000-140,000 tonne capacity, taking care of the company
