JSPL dispatches 1st consignment of rails from Raigarh plant

Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) today flagged off the first consignment of rails for Indian Railways from its Raigarh plant in Chhattisgarh, according to a company official.

The shipment of 1,000 tonne of 260-metre long rails from the plant to a railway site in Roorkee in Uttarakhand was flagged off by JSPL Chairman Naveen Jindal, a company official said.

JSPL -- the only private company making rails in India -- had bagged 20 per cent of the Rs 2,500 crore global tender floated by the Indian Railways to supply long rails.

Jindal, after bagging the tender last month, had said the order was for supplying around 1 lakh tonnes of rails over a period of one year but the company could complete the entire demand within three months as it can produce 50,000 tonnes rail per month.

The Railways had invited the global tender for procuring around 4.87 lakh metric tonnes of rails to meet the shortfall of supply from the state-run Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL).

This is the first time in three decades that rail procurement has been opened for the private sector. Till now, Railways has been procuring from government-owned SAIL.

It decided on an extra global tender after anticipating that SAIL would not be able to supply the 7,17,000 tonnes required for 2017-18 and 2018-19, as estimated at that time.

The Indian Railways is looking at 4,000 km of track renewal in each of the next two financial years, 2018-19 and 2019-20. Its estimated cost for 2018-19 is a little above Rs 10,000 crore.