Union Minister of Steel & Mines Narendra Singh Tomar on Saturday performed the Bhoomi Pujan for the Railway Siding Project at NMDC’s upcoming Nagarnar Steel Plant here.
The bhoomi pujan for the project was performed in the presence of Union Minister of State for Steel & Mines, Vishnu Deo Sai, Chhattisgarh Minister for Revenue & Disaster Management, Prem Prakash Pandey, Chhattisgarh Minister for Tribal Welfare and Education, Kedar Kashyap, Chhattisgarh Forest Minister, Mahesh Gagda, Dinesh Kashyap, MP from Bastar, Vikram Usendi, MP from Kanker, Santosh Bafna, MlA from Jagdalpur and Sunil Barthwal, Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of Steel.
Tomar was at NMDC’s Nagarnar Steel Plant to assess the progress of the upcoming 3 MTPA (million tonnes per annum) steel plant being built at a cost of Rs 15,525 crores.
Narendra K Nanda, NMDC's Director (Technical), Sandeep Tula, Executive Director (P&A), Prashant Das, In-charge, Nagarnar Steel Plant and senior officials of the company took the Minister around the project sites.
The Railway Siding Project is a critical component of the Steel Plant to bring in critical raw material like iron ore, coking coal, limestone and dolomite, etc. for production and for outward movement of finished steel and slag, officials stated.
Phase I of the Project envisages connecting the 6 kms stretch from the KK Railway line with Nagarnar Steel Plant at Ambagaon and Ammmagauda by laying about 53 kms of railway line within the Steel Plant premises at a cost of Rs 283 crores. The Project to be completed by IRCON is slated to be completed in the next 18 months to coincide with the Plant’s production schedule.
Tomar inspected construction work at the Blast Furnace, Thin Slab Caster, Sinter Plant, Coke Ovens, Raw Material Handling System, Power Blowing Station and the Steel melting Shop and expressed satisfaction at the progress of the project work.
later, interacting with NMDC officials he stressed upon the need to keep to the stipulated time-frames and perform close monitoring of work.
Nanda and senior officials assured the Union Minister of timely execution of the Project.
Notably, the Union Steel and Mines Ministry has plans of doubling installed capacity of NMDC ltd’s upcoming 3 MTPA integrated steel plant coming up at Nagarnar in Chhattisgarh in due course once the plant is commissioned.
The company is expecting commercial production of its 3 MTPA capacity steel plant in Chhattisgarh to commence by the middle of 2017. The plant is expected to be ready by December 2016 and trial of same will start by December 2016 itself, officials stated.
In order to increase the domestic capacity of steel production, a concept of Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) has been introduced, officials stated.
Two MoUs have already been signed by the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand for setting up Greenfield steel plants with initial capacity of 3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) each to be later enhanced to 6 MTPA. More than Rs 70,000 crore will be invested for setting up of these steel plants.
Notably, India was the only country among the major steel producing nations of the world which recorded a positive trend in steel production and consumption in 2015, officials stated.
The first 11 months of 2015, steel production vis a vis 2014, India showed a growth of 2.8 %, and world steel production registered decrease of 2.8 %. India’s steel production capacity has increased by 6 % in 2015 and consumption has increased by around 5 %.
Moreover, NMDC recorded iron ore production (provisional ) of 5.91 million tonnes (MT) from its mines in Chhattisgarh as on August 31, 2015.
The company informed this to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in its filing recently while offering details on production and sales of iron ore (provisional) upto the month of August 2015 from its mines in Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.
NMDC from its mines in Karnataka recorded iron ore production of 4.61 million tonnes during the aforesaid period. The total iron ore production from the company's mines in Chhattisgarh and Karnataka during the aforesaid period stood at 10.52 million tonnes, it informed the BSE.