Steel PSU Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) promoted jointly by the Odisha government and MMTC Ltd, aims to produce 3500 tonnes of hot metal per day. The steel company has completed the blast furnace capital repair work and now plans to operate the furnace at 100 per cent capacity, compared to 50-55 per cent previously. The blast furnace has a capacity to churn out 1.1 million tonnes of hot metal per year.
“The company has immediate plans to restart the Steel Melting Shop (SMS) to produce steel billets also. Along with the production of Pig Iron, with the improved hot metal production, NINL plans to resume steel billet production after restarting the steel melting shop in full capacity which will impact the company’s bottom line”, said S S Mohanty, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, NINL.
“With the restarting of SMS, NINL will get further boost to its turnaround plan when the captive mines of the company at Koira get operational this year,” Mohanty added.
The revival of NINL’s plant operations is also bound to spell relief for the pig iron market. Historically, NINL has been one of the largest producers and exporters of the intermediate product. Other products in NINL’s portfolio are steel billets, LAM (low ash metallurgical) coke, nut coke, coke breeze, crude tar, ammonium sulphate and granulated slag.
Also, with the completion of blast furnace capital repair, operationalisation of the 110 million tonne captive mines and full capacity utilization of the steel melting shop (SMS), NINL will have a potential future of becoming one of the leading producers of steel in the state. Apart from MMTC which owns 49.78 per cent equity in NINL, two Odisha government PSUs- Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and Industrial Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (Ipicol) have stakes in the steel project.
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