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State-run SAIL will add over 6 million tonne per annum steel-making capacity in the current fiscal to take the total to 19.5 mtpa as part of its ongoing Rs 61,870 crore capex programme.
"Major portion of the ongoing expansion will be completed by the end of this fiscal. Expansions at Durgapur, Rourkela and Burnpur will be completed this fiscal taking our capacity to 19.5 mtpa," SAIL Chairman C S Verma told PTI.
The current hot metal capacity of the company stands at 13.82 mtpa. It had embarked on Rs 61,870 crore capacity expansion programme across all its five major steel plants in 2006-07 to tup the capacity to 23.46 million tonne.
Stating that the capacity expansion at Bhilai Steel Plant would be completed within the next fiscal, Verma said by 2014-15, all the proposed expansions would be over. Two blast furnaces of 2.8 mtpa capacity each at Rourkela and Burnpur would help the company to reach the capacity to 19.5 mtpa.
Out of the total planned capex, SAIL had earmarked Rs 39,131 crore for capacity expansion; Rs 7,039 crore for value-addition or product-mix improvement; Rs 3,509 crore for technological up-gradation or modernisation and Rs 6,909 crore for de-bottlenecking.
It had incurred capital expenditure of Rs 44,536 crore till April this year. It spent Rs 101 crore in 2006-07; Rs 1,060 crore in 2007-08; Rs 4,195 crore in 2008-09; Rs 9,495 crore in 2009-10; Rs 10,210 crore in 2010-11; Rs 10,059 crore in 2011-12 and Rs 8,993 crore in 2012-13. In April, the first month of the current fiscal, the company spent Rs 424 crore.
SAIL has been expanding capacity at all its major steel plants at Rourkela, Bokaro, Durgapur, Bhilai and Burnpur.
There had been much delay in executing the expansion programme. The state-run firm has also received flak from the Steel Ministry for that.
However, Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma had earlier said in the Lok Sabha that modernisation and expansion plans of SAIL had been affected due to unforeseen soil conditions, under estimation of quantities by consultants, logistic problems, inadequate mobilisation of resources by contracting agencies and lack of deployment of technically competent/ skilled manpower by the contractors.
