Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (the Visakhapatnam-based steel plant) will be back to normal and achieve their pre-cyclone production levels in a fortnight, according to Chairman and Managing Director P Madhusudan.

He told reporters here on Thursday that the steel plant had been shut down since Sunday due to cyclone Hudhud, but power had been restored on Thursday morning. “We are now receiving 50 MW from the State grid. We will make attempts to make our captive power plant operational in one or two days and gradually resume the operations of the blast furnaces and the coke ovens. They are all intact and there is no damage to the equipment,” he said.

Discounting reports that the steel plant had suffered losses running into hundreds of crores, the CMD said there was “no significant damage to the steel plant’s equipment. Here and there, there was some damage to buildings and some control panels were damaged. On the whole, all our units - the old ones as well as the news ones built in the expansion project - are safe.”

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