ROURKELA: Treading cautiously after reportedly surviving a scare of major loss in 2024-25 financial year, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) of SAIL has set a moderate profit before tax (PBT) target of Rs 361 crore for 2025-26.
In 2024-25, RSP had projected a PBT target of Rs 1,008 crore but ended up suffering heavily due to the adverse steel market conditions. While RSP’s production was at the peak, it suffered from drastic drop in net sales realisation (NSR) of its products due to cheaper availability of imported steel in the domestic market.
Reliable sources in the RSP said in the first nine months of 2024-25 (April to December 2024), the blue chip unit of SAIL had incurred a loss of around Rs 145 crore. With improvement in performance in Quarter 4 (January to March 2025), RSP managed to thwart the fear of major loss. Pending declaration of audited figure, the plant may at best end up with net profit of barely Rs 10 crore or slightly more, they said.
According to the annual business plan (ABP) for 2025-26, RSP’s budget 2025-26 envisages PBT figure of Rs 361 crore from projected total revenue of Rs 22,998 crore.
Releasing the ABP 2025-26 on April 1, RSP director-in-charge Alok Verma had said in 2024-25 financial year, the plant crossed many milestones in production, productivity and techno-economics. “Hence, we have set ambitious targets for financial year 2025-26 such as hot metal production of 4.73 million tonne (MT), crude steel production of 4.39 MT and saleable steel production of 4.40 MT,” he said.
He exhorted the RSP employees to eliminate break downs and surprises, reduce wastage and cut down production cost by at least 20 per cent in financial year 2025-26.
President of BMS-affiliated Rourkela Ispat Karkhana Karmachari Sangh (RIKKS) Himanshu Sekhar Bal said according to available information, RSP is going to hardly make around Rs 10 crore of the net profit in 2024-25. This was largely due to the drop in NSR. The RSP’s production cost per tonne of steel was around Rs 45,500 but was selling for Rs 44,500 due to flooding of imported steel in the domestic market, he said.
Former general secretary of Steel Executives’ Federation of India (SEFI) Bimal Bisi said RSP is likely to bounce back in the ongoing financial year as the Centre has announced to impose 12 per cent safeguard duty on import of certain non-alloy and alloy steel flat products. This measure is a timely and necessary step to protect domestic steel manufacturers from adverse impact of import surges, he added.