Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday inaugurated the 55,000-tonne-per-annum (TPA) ferrochrome plant set up by Tata Steel in the company’s Gopalpur Industrial Park in Ganjam district.
Ministers Dr Pradeep Panigrahy and Usha Devi, Tata Steel India and SEA MD TV Narendran, Project Gopalpur vice-president & MD Arun Misra and other dignitaries graced the occasion.
The ferrochrome plant is a unique environment-friendly plant with state-of-the-art pollution control equipment and technology such as the ETP (Effluent Treatment Plant) and STP (Sewage Treatment Plant). It has 100% water harvesting facility catering to most of the water needs of the plant. It has an indigenously built semi-closed hybrid furnace, which is first of its kind in India. Also, it is the first plant in India to use briquetting method of chrome ore fines agglomeration. Narendran said the plant built at a cost of Rs 542 crore is the Tata Steel’s first green-field ferrochrome plant in India. In the coming days, the Gopalpur Industrial Park should see lot more investors, adding to the industrial progress of the region.
Tata Steel is also developing an Industrial Park at Gopalpur. Spread over 2,970 acre of land, the park is a multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Besides the Gopalpur unit, the Tata Steel has two other ferrochrome plants in Odisha, a 65,000-TPA plant at Bamnipal in Keonjhar district and the other at Athagarh in Cuttack district of 55,000 TPA capacity.