India’s largest state-owned steel company, SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) is carrying out massive modernisation and expansion (M&E) work of its five steel plants at Bhilai, Bokaro, Durgapur, Burnpur and a special steel plant in Salem with an estimated investment of INR 61,870 crores.
Under this M&E program, the company’s Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) in Chhattisgarh which is country’s largest rail producer has increased its rail production capacity from 0.8 MnT to 2 MnT per annum.
The honourable Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi dedicated this modernisation and expansion work at BSP to the nation today. This is the third plant of SAIL which the Prime Minister dedicated to the nation. In 2015, he had dedicated Rourkela and IISCO steel plants.
The commercial production of world’s largest 130 metre long rails from BSP’s Universal Rail Mill (URM) was started in Nov’16 and the total investment involved in establishing new URM is INR 1,200 crore.
This URM complex will equip SAIL to meet Indian railways’ specific demand of 260-metre rails as the new mill is capable of producing 260 metre long rail with a single weld and also has the provision to supply welded panels up to 520 metre length in future.
Along with the URM, a long rail welding complex had also been set for rail welding. The welding complex is equipped with fully automated flash butt welding machine to weld rail panels of 260-metre length and fully automated long rail handling facility.
With an annual production capacity of 3.15 MnT of saleable steel, the BSP also specialises in other products such as wire rods, merchant products, earthquake-resistant grade of TMT and heavy structural including channels and beams.
When SAIL was unable to meet Indian railways rail requirement
SAIL has been the sole supplier of rails to Indian railways over past five decades. However, in FY 2017-18, SAIL with its previous capacity was unable to meet the country’s rail requirements resulting which Indian railways had to float a global tender to procure its additional rail requirements. As per the market reports, India had rail requirement of 14.59 lakh metric tonnes and the state-owned SAIL was able to supply 9.50 lakh metric tonnes of the total requirement.
However, with this addition in SAIL’s rail manufacturing capacity, company will be able to meet the Indian railways 1.5 MnT of rails requirement for FY 2018-19.
Naveen Jindal owned JSPL (Jindal Steel and Power) in Chhattisgarh is only company other than SAIL that manufactures rails in India. The company has total capacity of 0.8 MnT to produce rails and beams annually.
BSP also started its blast furnace No.8 under the M&E program
In Mar’18, SAIL blown in its blast furnace no.8 Mahamaya with a total capacity of 2.8 MnT per annum. With the new furnace, SAIL BSP’s hot metal capacity increased from 5 MnT to 7.5 MnT per annum.
This new blast furnace F No. 8 has various new generation technological features like Cast-House and Stock House DedustingSystem, Top Pressure Recovery Turbine (TRT), Pulverised Coal Injection (PCI), Modern Heat Transmission System through Carbon Block, Ceramic Cup and SGI & Cu-staves and other state-of-the-art energy-efficient and pollution control equipment including Waste Heat Recovery system.
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