VSP's capacity addition plans gain steam

KOLKATA: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL), the holding company of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), has entered a Rs 1,500-crore contract with a consortium of Paul Wurth, Italy, and Larsen & Toubro for construction and commissioning VSP’s third blast furnace.

The furnace is at the heart of VSP’s expansion plan to raise capacity to 6.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from the present 3.2 mtpa. It is the single-largest contract awarded by VSP in its history and involves a foreign component of about Rs 600 crore.

The new furnace is scheduled to be commissioned within 30 months. The agreement was signed by AK Banerjee, executive director (projects), RINL, in the presence of PK Bishnoi, RINL’s chairman and managing director, at Visakhapatnam on Saturday. KS Shankar, executive director (finance), and representatives of engineering consultants MN Dastur & Co, Kolkata, were also present on the occasion.

The blast furnace will have a volume of 3,800 cubic metres and is slated to have a production capacity 2.5 mtpa, which is among the biggest in the Indian steel industry. The project will be taken up on a total turnkey basis, including all civil, structural, electrical and automation works involved for commissioning of blast furnace.

To achieve the highest levels of productivity and energy conservation, state-of-the-art blast furnace operations technology like coal dust injection, oxygen enrichment, copper cooling plates and level-2 automation have been incorporated. Mr Bishnoi stressed that the project has to be completed ahead of schedule to set a benchmark in execution of major projects.