Friday, October 29,
SteelMint Exclusive
Chhattisgarh MSP (Mini Steel Plant) association organized a technical seminar on Pelletization in Raipur. The motive behind the seminar was to promote the new technology to produce Sponge pellets by using Iron ore fines.
China is one of the major countries which makes use of Sponge pellets as it has limited access to use Iron ore lumps; fines are being imported by Chinese mills from India, Brazil and Australia.
The rising cost of Iron ore lumps in India has made the manufactures switch to a new technology that uses Iron ore fines which is available in plenty and mainly exported to China currently.
Industry speakers discussed intently on the pros and cons of using the new technology. Mr. B.L. Agrawal, Director, GPIL said, “The use of Sponge pellets will help is reducing the power usage and will increase the efficiency of the plants by almost 10%. Ingot manufactures will be able to reduce their prices by around` 2,200/MT. The amount of slag will also be reduced”. Commenting on the present steel market, Mr. Agrawal added, “revival in demand is expected post Diwali”.
Representatives from JSPL, Raigarh being a pioneer user of this technology, also presented the benefits that can accrue to Mini Steel plants when using Sponge Pellets.
Being a better technology it is believed that Sponge Pellets is a clear substitute for Sponge iron. It will be interesting to see if it will totally replace Sponge iron owing to such high cost of size ore. Some speakers also differed in their opinion and believed that the new technology will be only beneficial to Arch furnaces and not the Induction furnaces.
Such discussion forums/initiatives indicate the magnitude of the issue – high domestic iron ore prices and strength of the association who wants to bring out solutions collectively.
Impact on Iron ore fines
Currently, Iron ore fines prices are entirely based on the demand from the export market, mainly China. But, with increased usage of technologies like Sponge Pellets, there will be a boost in demand for iron ore fines also in the domestic market. This might lead to an increase in fines prices as domestic consumption also expands going forward.
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