GPH Ispat ltd, one of the major steel manufacturers in Bangladesh is soon going to become the steelmaker with 3rd largest crude steel capacity in the country. With the long-awaited commissioning of the company’s new expansion project in Kumira, Sitakunda likely to be achieved by October 2019, GPH Ispat will become the 3rd Steelmaker in the world (1st in Asia) to have a steelmaking facility based on the Quantum EAF furnace.
In recent visit by SteelMint to the GPH plant, sources in the company shared that post the ceremonial commissioning of the new facility in October, the operations will commence with a small scale production in the beginning, while over the course of the next 6 months, the company aims to steadily increase the production to its near capacity of 840,000 MT/year, in addition to the existing melting capacity of 170,000 MT/year, thus taking its combined crude steel capacity to over 1 MnTPA. While on the finished steel front, 640,000 MT/year of Rolling (Rebar and Sections) capacity will be added to the current rolling capacity of 150,000 MTPA.
The ambitious expansion project was announced by the company in early 2016, while a contract with the renowned global engineering solutions provider “Primetals Technologies” was signed in Dec’16, to provide the company with an EAF Quantum furnace and a ladle furnace, in addition to a high-speed continuous billet caster and a bar and section mill. As per the original plan, the new plant was scheduled to be operationalized by early 2018, however, quite a few logistical and seasonal challenges delayed the project by over a year.
The heavy monsoon witnessed every year in the Sitakunda area near Chittagong causes a major water logging problem in the area, making the installation and testing process of the plant rather challenging, further affecting the time-line of the expansion.
The new EAF Quantum Furnace will supposedly help to cut the operational costs by reducing the energy consumption, while also significantly increasing the steelmaking efficiency by producing steel at a rate of up to 36 heats per day. Notably, the plant is also installing one of the first “WinLink Flex Technology” in the region, which will allow uninterrupted casting and rolling of long products, thus reducing the operational costs.
When the plant reaches near to its full production capacity, it will occupy the position of the 3rd largest steelmaker in the country after, the 2 giants of the industry – BSRM and Abul Khair Steel. With the ongoing expansion plans of several other top steel manufacturers in the country, the total steel melting capacity of Bangladesh is likely to cross 8 MnT in the coming years. With Bangladesh being majorly dependent on imported ferrous scrap for steelmaking, the increasing capacities will directly lead to a surge in ferrous scrap imports, as even more no of companies are likely to book bulk cargo vessels for their imported scrap requirements from the next year onwards.
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