Despite its operations having been ravaged by cyclone Hudhud, State-owned Rashtriya Ispat Nigam ltd (RINl, which is the corporate entity of Vizag Steel) is ready to come out with its IPO and is only awaiting the go ahead from the Department of Disinvestment (DoD).
Sources within the company told The Pioneer that RINl’s lone Visakhapatnam located plant will be fully functional within two weeks time and that the natural calamity, which had earlier this month hit the port city, has not in any way affected its plans of coming out with the IPO.
“On our part we are ready with the IPO plan, and only the directions from the DoD are awaited,” a senior company official said.
In fact, sources indicated that the RINl IPO may come before November 16, the day the Navratna status accorded to RINl is set to expire. The company is mainly looking to hit the capital markets to retain its Navaratna status, which had been accorded to it on November 16, 2010, on the condition that it would get listed within two years.
The Government is aiming to garner `2,500 crore through the stake sale. The Navratna company’s listing plan in the last two years has been postponed thrice owing to various reasons. However, RINl last month filed an offer document with Sebi for an IPO through which the Government will sell 10 per cent of its stake in it. Post the stake sale, Government’s holding will come down to 90 per cent in the company.
RINl is also in the process of expanding its production capacity to 6.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by the next fiscal, from the existing 3 million tonnes.
Two boilers of the plant have already been revived as pressure was built up through 50 MW of power supply given by the Andhra Pradesh Government, sources informed. They added that the coke oven and blast furnaces have been brought back to normal mode and the township cleaning process is also almost over.
The cyclone Hudhud has caused huge damage to RINl’s shore-based plant. Though the company had shut down two of the three blast furnaces, metal drawing from the third one was yet to be finished when the cyclone hit.
Apart from pressing its own engineers into action, RINl had also sought help from outside experts having expertise in operating power plant and blast furnaces to resume the plant and ensure that no untoward incidence happens while starting various units, sources said.
Meanwhile a company statement quoting Chairman and Managing Director P Madhusudan said, “to scale up the production and to start the rolling mills, RINl is in the process of strengthening the power supply line from State Grid.”Madhusudan had earlier said that the loss of production would be bridged with extra efforts in subsequent months of the current fiscal so that the target is achieved.