SAIL to increase capacity to 19.5 MT by Sept this year

COUNTRY'S major steel major Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is set to increase its capacity to 19.5 million tonnes (MT) by September this year from its present...
hot metal capacity of 14 MT. Recently, the steel giant has undertaken a massive Rs 72,000 crore modernisation and expansion plan.
SAIL chairman C S Verma disclosed that the Maharatna PSU will be able to take the capacity to 23.5 MT in the next fiscal. He said that SAIL's focus in the current fiscal would be to complete the balance facilities under its modernisation and expansion programme and ramp up production from the new units in the shortest possible time. SAIL has cumulatively spent Rs 53,270 crore on the programme till March 2014. During 2013-14, projects worth about Rs 6,500 crore were operationalised, resulting in the addition of 2.5 MT hot metal capacity. The projects include a new blast furnace and slab caster at Rourkela, a new ore handling plant and sinter machine at Bhilai and a rebuilt coke oven battery at Durgapur. Further, the steel giant has plans to ramp up capacity to 50 MTPA by 2025 entailing investments of Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Its capacity expansion to 50 MTPA is in line with government's vision of enhancing India's steel-making capacity to 300 MTPA by 2025, from 85 MTPA at present. The company had registered 20.6 per cent growth in net profit to Rs 2,616 crore in FY'14. SAIL's gross turnover was Rs 51,866 crore in FY14, which Verma said was the highest ever and had increased more than 5 per cent from Rs 49,350 crore in FY13.
The state-owned steel maker posted a disappointing net profit of 1.5 percent in fourth quarter (year-on-year) to Rs 453 crore. It was mainly due to weak operational performance. SAIL’s total income increased 10 percent to Rs 13,509 crore in the quarter ended March 2014 from Rs 12,284.7 crore in same quarter last year.