Financial year 2013-14, which also coincided with the fiftieth year of the Bokaro Steel Plant (BSl) of the Steel Authority of India limited (SAIl), proved a watershed year, signalling a long-awaited turn-around in plant operations.
The bet on taking up major maintenance activities started paying off, as the losses accrued in the first half of fiscal 2013-14 on account of outsourcing of inputs like coke, sinter and pellets were significantly neutralised during the third quarter. The first two months of the last quarter indicated a steady run for BSl, pointing to positive year-end accounts and a robust momentum of operations. As signs of planned and concerted efforts bearing fruit become visible, this unit of SAIl is upbeat about forging ahead and achieving better capacity utilisation in the days to come.
In fiscal 2013-14, there has been a 3.8 per cent growth in production of Cast Slab, 0.4 percent increase in Crude Steel production, 4.9 per cent increase in Ingot Rolling, 1.8 percent growth in production of HR Coil, a significant 27.2 percent jump in production of Galvanised Coil and 4.8 per cent increase in Saleable Steel production as compared to fiscal 2012-13. There has also been a 10.7 percent increase in production of Special Steel in 2013-14 compared to CPlY.
The story has been positive on the dispatch front as well, with increase of 7.5 per cent in HR Coil dispatch, 4.5 per cent in HR Plate/Sheet, 3.7per cent in CR Saleable, 27.3 per cent in GP/GC and 10.3 per cent in dispatch of Saleable Steel. Growth to the tune of 18.4percent was recorded in direct dispatches while a 4.2percent increase was registered on the Export front.
Close on the heels of best ever daily production of Hot Metal from Blast Furnace-5 on 23rd February, Blast Furnace-2 breached the 5000T threshold for the first time on 28th March. With four furnace operations, best-ever daily production of 14,112 MT of Hot Metal was made on 10th March. The fiscal also witnessed record monthly production of Hot Metal from Blast Furnaces-2 and 5 and record Monthly, Quarterly and Half-Yearly production of Hot Metal with four furnace operations.
Another annual record was set in Cast Slab production. Record through-put of Mixer-2 of SMS-II and record lining-life of steel ladles in both converter shops led the techno-economic highlights, which include 4 per cent improvement in Specific Power Consumption, 5 per cent improvement in Specific Refractory Consumption and 0.4 percent improvement in Specific Water Consumption.
Bokaro Steel developed some new products during the year including EN 10120 P245 and EN10120 P265 (normal and higher strength for export quality gas cylinders), API CT J55 (for drill casing in oil wells), IS 513 CR1 340 and 390 Al K (for precision tube industry) and IS 6240 Gr-I lPG (for normalised cylinders).
The team of the Continuous Casting Shop implemented the novel business idea of converting one of the four caster strands to produce slabs of enhanced 225 mm thickness, setting the stage for enhanced productivity.
The efforts and initiatives of the BSl collective received wide acclaim. While several BSl employees bagged the prestigious Vishwakarma Rashtriya Purashkar, BSl also won the CII Productivity Award, Greentech Foundation Award for CSR and Environment Management, CII-EXIM Bank Business Excellence Award, QCFI and INSSAN Awards and other accolades.