BS reported that Mideast Integrated Steel Limited, a Mesco group company having an one million tonne pig iron plant at Kalinganagar in Jajpur district of Odisha, plans to upgrade the unit to a 1.2 million tonne finished steel product facility by the end of December 2014.
Mr JK Singh president of Mesco Group said that "The company has begun upgrading its Kalinganagar plant into a fully integrated steel plant of 1.2 million tonne per annum capacity. With an investment of INR 1,000 crore, a steel melting shop with rolling mill for rebar and wire rod is being set up."
He said that “The expansion plan of the pig iron plant was announced in 2008, but the company had to shelve the proposal for some time due to heavy debts on its balance sheet. It became a debt free company in the last fiscal, following which it has started focusing on the upgradation. He added that "In the next phase of expansion, the finished steel capacity would be ramped up to 3.5 million tonnes per."
MISL, which started production in 2005, has been making steady profits for last three years from pig iron sales and has decided not to sell pig iron once its expansion plans are completed. For the upcoming capacity enhancement, the company said, it has finalized technical and financial details after a high level team of MISL visited China.
The company has links to iron ore and coal mines, which helps it to produce intermediate steel products such as pig iron at lower cost. However, with the recent and upcoming expansion plans, the cost of production of steel is expected to go up. Mesco Steel is in the process of setting up a conveyor and a 1,400 tonne per day crusher unit at its Roida iron ore mine to boost output. It has recently commissioned a 2,000 tonne per day sinter plant and is constructing a half million tonne slag processing plant at Jajpur.
Source - Business Standard
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