Neelachal Ispat restarts ops, aims at 3,500 tonnes hot metal output per day

Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) has resumed its blast furnace operations at Kalinganagar (Odisha) after completing capital repair work.

NINL, a steel PSU jointly promoted by MMTC Ltd and two Odisha government PSUs — Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and Industrial Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (Ipicol), aims to operate the blast furnace at 100 per cent capacity, instead of 50-55 per cent before capital repair. The steel plant has set a daily production target of 3,500 tonnes per day.

The public sector steel maker also had immediate plans to restart its Steel Melting Shop (SMS) to produce steel billets.

"Along with the production of pig iron, with the improved hot metal production, NINL plans to resume steel billet production after restarting the steel melting shop in full capacity, which will impact the company’s bottom line”, said S S Mohanty, vice chairman & managing director, NINL.

"With the restarting of SMS, NINL will get further boost to its turnaround plan when the captive mines of the company at Koira gets operational this year”, he added.

The revival of NINL’s plant operations is also bound to spell relief for the pig iron market. Historically, NINL has been one of the largest producers and exporters of the intermediate product. Other products in NINL’s portfolio are steel billets, LAM (low ash metallurgical) coke, nut coke, coke breeze, crude tar, ammonium sulphate and granulated slag.

Also, with the completion of blast furnace capital repair, operationalisation of the 110 million tonnes captive mines and full capacity utilisation of the steel melting shop (SMS), NINL will have a potential future of becoming one of the leading producers of steel in the state. Apart from MMTC which owns 49.78 per cent equity in NINL, two Odisha government PSUs — Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and Industrial Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (Ipicol) have stakes in the steel project.