VISAKHAPATNAM: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, will explore sea routes for business. With the Sagarmala Project in mind, RINL authorities recently signed an agreement for a pilot project with Mumbai-based domestic shipping company Shreyas Shipping & Logistics Ltd (SSL). Union Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh will flag off the first consignment on the sea route from Vizag on November 1. Since long, RINL officials have been mulling the adoption of sea transportation. Even as the Central government prioritises water transportation through the Sagarmala Project, VSP authorities have decided to go in for seaway transportation and made an agreement with SSL to transport 2.25 lakh tonnes of steel products to RINL stockyards at Ahmedabad, Kochi and Mumbai.
RINL has 22 stockyards across the country and SSL has agreed to take the stipulated 2.25 lakh tonnes of VSP products to stock points. SSL will ferry VSP products from the plant premises to RINL stockyards.
For this, VSP will pay the company `75 crore per annum. If the pilot project is successful, RINL will adopt sea transport by shipping more goods on a permanent basis, officials say. According to sources, the steel plant recently completed modernisation and revamping of its blast furnace, steel melt shop and sinter machine at a cost of `4,000 crore which may result in another million tonnes of production.
RINL took up a plant expansion exercise with `12,300 crore to enhance production volume from 3 million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes. RINL will attain a capacity of 7.3 million tonnes of annual production by 2018-19 fiscal. RINL has set a target of 5 million tonnes production with an expected business turnover of `15,000 crore for the current financial year. “As we set our target high our efforts too increased. We are confident of achieving the target with our collective efforts,” said an RINL official.
Shreyas Shipping & Logistics Ltd, a part of the Transworld group, is a market leader in domestic coastal container shipping covering all major ports and container terminals on the Indian coast. SSL is the preferred partner of main line operators for transhipment for its ability to carry feeder, domestic as well as regional cargo. It also offers services to West Asia and Bangladesh.