The Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) will go ahead with its expansion plans despite the global meltdown, said managing director SN Singh here on Thursday.
RSP is going for major expansion and modernisation. The plan envisages capacity increase by more than double to 4.5 million tonne of hot metal, 4.2m tonne of crude steel and 3.9m tonne of saleable steel. New facilities will include a blast furnace complex, which incidentally will be among the biggest in the country; a sinter plant; and a 70-metre tall coke oven battery with 57 ovens.
Singh said the plant has achieved the highest-ever hot metal production of 2.3m tonne in 2008, recording a growth of above 5.2% over last year. On the crude steel production front also the plant made 2.1m tonne, which is not only the best-ever but also an increase of 6.5% over last year.
“We fine tuned our production according to the needs of the market and made around 4.8 lakh tonne of plates, 46,000 tonne of ERW pipes, 1 lakh tonne of galvanised sheets and 17,000 tonne of ET plates, thereby creating a new record in the calendar year performance,” he added.