Jindal Steel crude steel production rises 22% from year-ago to 1.61 MT

Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) on Thursday said its domestic production of crude steel and related products for the quarter ended December 31, 2019 stood at 1.61 million tonnes (MT), up 22 per cent from the year ago period.

The company's crude steel output had stood at 1.32 million tonnes in the corresponding period last year, JSPL said in a statement.

According to JSPL, this is the "highest ever quarterly domestic production of crude steel and related products... as a result of the strong and consistence performance across all locations, especially in Angul operations,".

During the third quarter of FY20, JSPL recorded a growth of 30 per cent in sales at 1.66 MT, as against 1.27 million tonnes a year-ago.

JSPL further said export shipments increased to more than 3 lakh MT.

In Oman, the sales of its subsidiary -- JSIS-Oman Steel -- increased by 27 per cent to 0.572 million MT and steel production increased by 10 per cent to 0.502 million MT.

"We are going to start our DRI- CGP (Coal Gasification plant) unit at Angul during Jan 2020, and together with a favourably evolving product mix, we expect to further drive growth in sales and profit," JSPL MD V R Sharma said.

Sharma further noted that increased demand from infrastructure projects especially for segments like railways, defense, petroleum, and pipelines will certainly drive steel demands for JSPL.

"As we begin 2020, we are excited about the prospects, and confident that the coming quarter would be even much better for JSPL Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently unveiled Rs 102 lakh crore of projects under National Infrastructure Pipeline, which is to be implemented in the next five year as part of the government's spending push in the infrastructure sector," Sharma said.