SAIL unit gets approval for producing ship building steel

Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), a unit of the state-run Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), Thursday said it has received international approval for producing ship building grades of steel.

The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and Det Norske Veritas-Germanischer Lloyd (DNV-GL) - ship building classification societies for certification of materials - have granted the approval for producing both ordinary as well as high-strength grades of steel, a company statement said.

Approval from these societies is mandatory for producing such steel. The process of approval included plant audit by Indian office of the societies to assess the plant process and testing capabilities and witnessing the testing of samples of different grades selected by them.

After the audit, all the test reports, documents and required information was sent to their head office.

After satisfactory review of all these audit reports, "approval certificates" have been sent from Houston, US in case of ABS and Norway in case of DNV-GL. ABS certificate is valid for give years till Dec 10, 2019 and DNV-GL certificate is valid till June 30, 2019, it said.

It is for the first time that RSP has been approved by these ship building classification societies for steel making, a senior company official said, calling it "a matter of pride" that it now figures amongst very few steel makers in India listed by these societies as "approved manufacturers".

"There is a huge demand especially in export market for the ship building grades of slabs and with these approvals now RSP can accept and serve in almost all the ship building grades of different societies," he said.

The RSP in Odisha's Sundergarh district, 514 km from Bhubaneswar, is India's first integrated steel plant in the public sector.