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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to unveil expansion plan for the Rourkela Steel Plant along with new growth blueprint for public sector major Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) called ‘Vision-2025’,
This will be done during a function where the Prime Minister will dedicate the new modernised Rourkela Steel Plant, one of the five integrated plants of SAIL, to the nation on April 1. The plant has been upgraded with an investment of ₹12,000 crore.
The blueprint will envisage raising SAIL’s capacity further to 50 mtpa (million tonnes per annum) by 2025 with an approximate investment of ₹ 1.5 lakh crore. The company has a long-term plan of taking its capacity to 100 mtpa.
SAIL is undertaking expansion and modernisation plan involving investment of around ₹ 72,000 crore to take its capacity to 23.46 mtpa from 13.8 mtpa. This will be completed by the middle of next year.
This expansion plan covers five integrated plants (Bhilai-MP, Rourkela-Odisha, Durgapur-Bengal, Bokaro-Bihar and Burnpur-Bengal) and three special plants (Salem-TN, Durgapur-Bengal and Bhadrawati-Karnataka), besides others.
The new and modernised Rourkela Steel Plant has a much bigger blast furnace, which has augmented its hot metal capacity to 4.5 mtpa from 2 mtpa at present. With completion of modernisation, annual capacity of crude steel at Rourkela plant will increase to 4.2 mtpa from 1.9 mtpa while that of saleable steel will increase to 3.9 mtpa from 1.67 mtpa.
The modernisation and expansion incorporates the latest energy efficient and environment friendly technologies such as seven meter tall coke oven battery with coke dry quenching, high capacity blast furnace (4060 cu. m.), wide slab caster and plate mill.
Product rangeIt is SAIL’s only plant that produces silicon steels for the power sector, high quality pipes for the oil and gas sector and tin plates for the packaging industry. Its product range also includes various flat, tubular and coated products.
Currently, the plant has customers such as Defence Ministry. Company officials claimed that steel used in indigenous Aircraft Carrier INS Vikrant and the combat battle tank Arjun was manufactured here.
The plant was built in the late fifties with West German collaboration and inaugurated by then President Rajendra Prasad on February 3, 1959
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