JSW Steel today reported a marginal growth of 0.33% in its crude steel production at 6.03 lakh tonnes (LT) in November, due to iron ore shortages and shut down of one of its units.
The company, had produced 6.01 LT crude steel in November, 2011.
Moreover, capacity utilisation of its 10 million tonnes steel plant at Karanataka's Vijayanagar has also gone down to 70% "due to acute shortage and inferior quality of iron ore in e-auctions," the company said in a statement.
The Sajjan Jindal-led company has been struggling to keep its production at optimum levels for more than a year now due to the continuous shortage of iron ore -- a key raw material for steel making.
JSW's November production was also impacted by a planned shut down of one of its units of 0.80 million tonnes per annum producing capacity since October 15.
"The company took shutdown of one of its corex furnaces for capital repairs and capacity enhancement during October, 2012 and the same is expected to re-start in January, 2013," JSW said.
In November, production of flat products grew by 20% to 5.15 LT, up from 4.28 LT in the same month last year. Besides, long products of the company registered a growth of 30% to 1.67 LT during the month, the company said.
Flat products are used for consumer durables and fast moving consumer goods sector, while long products are meant for the construction sector.
Shares of JSW were being quoted at Rs 733.90 apiece during the late afternoon trade on the BSE, down 2.27% from their previous close.
