Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), which has five integrated steel plants under its umbrella, proposes to set up another greenfield integrated plant with annual steel output capacity of 6 million tonne.
However, the public sector steel major is yet to identify the location of the project.
The company is in talks with some state governments where it can get land and the matter is likely to be placed before the PSUs board soon, a senior official of the state run company said here.
“We are exploring the possibility of setting up a 6 million tonne greenfield project and talks are on with state governments where we can get land”, said V K Gulhati, director (technical), SAIL, declining to name the state with whom the company is in touch with.
Talking to the media on the sidelines of a seminar on ‘Harnessing mineral resources of Orissa for sustainable development’, Gulhati said, this project would be implemented as part of the Vision-2020 agenda of the company which is under preparation now.
He said, the company has some surplus land at Bokaro and Durgapur, but that would not be sufficient for setting up the proposed 6 million tonne plant which would be expanded to 10 million tonne later.
He said, the greenfield project would be implemented along with the brownfield expansions being executed by the company.
The capacity of Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) is being raised to 7.5 million tonne from 5 million tonne at present. Similarly, the capacity of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) would go up to 4.5 million tonne from 2 million tonne now.
Similarly, the capacity of Bokaro Steel Plant (BSP) is being raised to 7 million tonne from 4.5 million tonne. Infact, SAIL plans to step up its production capacity from 14.4 million tonne per annum at present to 23.46 million tonne by 2012-13. Besides, the steel major intends to set up a super-critical power plant for meeting its future power requirement. While its total consumption at present is about 800 Mw, this is likely to increase to 2000 Mw in the near future.
The proposed power plant would be pithead based and the company has approached the Union government for allotment of coal block for this purpose. The location of the power plant would depend on where the coal block is allotted.
On the expansion work of RSP, Gulhati said, most of the orders for the current phase of expansion have been placed.
The order for the plate mill would be placed within a month, he added.
Since the coal import by SAIL is likely to increase to 20 to 30 million in next few years from 10 million tonne now, the company is looking forward to set up a dedicated port in Orissa. SAIL would either set it up on its own or partner with other companies for the project.
Director of Industries, Hemanta Sharma, chairman, Institute of Technology and environmental Studies, P K Jena, president, Utkal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI), S L Bhut, and former Nalco CMD, S K Tamotia spoke in the seminar.
