By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR/BARBIL: With Union Steel-PNG Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at the helm of affairs, SAIL-Bhilai Steel Plant has recorded a remarkable growth of 42 per cent in the production. Anil Kumar Chaudhary, chairman of SAIL, commented, “SAIL is committed to fulfill the requirements of Indian Railways. SAIL and Indian Railways share a synergy of more than sixty years. We are continuously ramping up our production of rails.” The 260 metre rail panels provide significant advantage of lesser number of welded joints in the tracks thereby improving safety and increasing speed. During the same period, a substantial growth of 30 per cent has also been achieved in overall production of prime rails.
SAIL-BSP has been producing world-class rails for Indian Railways for more than six decades from its Rail and Structural Mill (RSM) and the new and modern Universal Rail Mill (URM) that has been rolling out the world’s longest 130 metre rail as single piece. Both RSM and URM supply UTS 90 prime rails in length upto 260 metre to Indian Railways.
Cumulative production of UTS 90 prime rails from the new state-of-the-art Universal Rail Mill in 2019-20 has been 5.38 lakh tonnes, clocking a 46 per cent growth over production of 3.69 lakh tonnes by URM in 2018-19. Cumulative production of UTS 90 prime rails from Rail and Structural Mill in 2019-20 has been 7.47 lakh tonnes, registering a growth of 21 per cent over production of 6.16 lakh tonnes by RSM over CPLY.
With the combined efforts of both the Rail and Structural Mill and Universal Rail Mill teams, the graph of production of rails had been steadily rising in 2019-20.
SAIL-Bhilai Steel Plant ended the fiscal 2019-20 with a cumulative production of 12.85 lakh tonnes of UTS 90 prime rails, thereby registering a growth of 30 per cent over the volume of prime UTS 90 rails produced over CPLY. In 2018-19, the plant had produced 9.85 lakh tonnes of UTS 90 prime rails.
Significantly, the portion of 260 metre panel rails in total production of UTS 90 prime rails in 2019-20 has also risen to 52 per cent from 48 per cent in 2018-19. Cumulative production of long rails in fiscal 2019-20 has been 6.66 lakh tonnes as against 4.68 lakh tonnes over CPLY, resulting in a growth of 42 per cent.
Raw Materials Division (RMD) of Mines of SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) produced 22.47 MT of iron ore in 2019-20 notching a growth of 4.7 per cent over CPLY. The mines also recorded iron ore despatch of 22.37 MT notching a growth of 7 per cent over CPLY. RMD also scored best ever iron ore lump production of 7.50 MT clocking a growth of 1.7 per cent over CPLY. It is its best performance since inception.
Individually SAIL-RMD’s Bolani and Taldih iron ore mines recorded highest ever annual production of 5.926 MT and 0.984 MT respectively. Both the mines also clocked best ever despatch of 5.689 MT and 0.974MT respectively.
RMD iron ore mines, which are located in Jharkhand and Odisha, meet 100 per cent iron ore demand of SAIL Steel Plant in eastern part of the country. In addition to that, RMD supplement iron ore fines requirement of Bhilai steel plant in Chhattisgarh. Mines under Bhilai Steel Plant produced and despatched respectively 6.79 MT and 7.06 MT of iron ore. In total SAIL ramped up iron ore production and dispatch to 29.26 MT and 29.43 MT notching growth of 3.2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.
Selling of iron ore fines from SAIL mines has also been initiated to augment the country’s steel production, as the iron ore demand in the market is soaring.RMD’s limestone production and despatch shot up to 1.24 MT and 1.25 MT respectively.
