Will SAIL-BSP be able to complete the Indian Railways order this fiscal?

Company racing towards fulfilling railways' requirement of 1.35 million tonne

Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), the only entity of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) producing rails, was moving closer to completing the order of Indian Railways for the current fiscal.

The plant had crossed the 1 million tonne (MT) mark in cumulative production of rails on January 21. The Indian Railways had placed an order for 1.35 MT of rails for the current financial year. In last four years, SAIL-BSP had missed to fulfill the demand of IR.

BSP had, for the first time, crossed the figure of 1 million tonne in rail production, as the capacity had increased in BSP after commissioning of new Universal Rail Mill (URM) in 2017. The world’s longest 130 metre rail as single piece are rolled out in the new state-of-the-art URM.

Both Rail and Structural Mill (RSM) and URM, which supply world class rails in lengths upto 260 metre to IR, has an installed capacity of 2 million tonne per annum.

In the last financial year, the BSP missed the target marginally. As against the demand of 1 MT, it could supply 985,000 tonnes of rails to the IR. “Since more than two months are left and the plant has recorded best-ever production, the company is optimistic to complete the entire IR order,” BSP spokesperson said.

The Plant has registered significant growth of over 37.6 per cent in total volume of rails produced so far in FY 2019-20 over corresponding period of last fiscal year. Cumulative production of rails from URM in current fiscal year till January 17, 2020 was 406,361 tonne, thereby recording growth of 50.8 per cent over production recorded by URM in corresponding period of last fiscal year.

Even RSM recorded growth of 29.7 percent over corresponding period of last fiscal year by producing 579,540 tonnes of rails.