VISAKHAPATNAM: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, achieved a growth of 8 per cent in Liquid Steel and Crude Steel production during the first quarter of the current fiscal.
The power restrictions and power holidays imposed by the state government adversely impacted the production growth in the first quarter.
In techno-economic parameters, improvements were achieved in Blast Furnace productivity (47 pc), fuel rate (3 pc), specific energy consumption (2 pc), specific water consumption (5 pc) and labour productivity (1 pc) compared to the corresponding period of last year (CPLY).
Top recovery turbine for generation of 14 MW of power from Top Pressure of Blast Furnace gas was commissioned in June. This results in substantial electrical charge savings and contributes in a sizable way to the reduction of carbon emissions. This is the second energy saving power unit installed in 2014.
Earlier, a unit for generation of 20.6 MW of power from waste heat of sinter machines was installed in collaboration with NEDO, Japan, the first of its kind in Indian steel industry.
RINL chairman-cum-managing director P Madhusudan expressed confidence that the performance would be ramped up further with stabilisation of expansion units and dedicated efforts of the RINL collective in the current fiscal.
Sales Performance
The RINL completed the first quarter (Q1) of 2014-15 with a turnover of `2,661 crore, representing a growth of 7 per cent over CPLY. On the exports front, an impressive growth of 124 per cent was achieved over CPLY.