3 special steel plants under SAIL get nod for stake sale

KOLKATA: The government has in principle approved strategic disinvestment in three special steel plants under Steel Authority of India Ltd: VISL Bhadrawati, Salem Steel Plant and Alloy Steels Plant, Durgapur.

As part of the disinvestment exercise, the government will hold auctions to identify strategic buyers for these units.

In a notification, SAIL said the steel ministry has informed the company of the inprinciple approval given by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for the stake sale. “The disinvestment of these units will be to strategic buyers to be identified through a two-stage auction process as recommended by the Core Group of Secretaries on Disinvestment,” it said.

Visvesvaraya Iron & Steel Ltd, Bhadrawati, which was taken over by SAIL in 1997, produces alloy steel and pig iron. It was started by M Visvesvaraya, a diwan of Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the then ruler of Mysore, in 1923 under the name of Mysore Iron Works. The main objective was to tap the rich deposits of iron ore at Kemmanagudi to produce iron and steel.

VISL has an installed capacity of 2.16 lakh tonnes of hot metal and 98,280 tonne of alloy and special steel.