Production at the Bhilai Steel Plant has touched an all-time high in the three key areas "" hot metal, crude steel and saleable steel"" during the first half of the present financial year compared with the corresponding period last year.
The plant also did quite a good job by exporting more than 183,000 tonnes to different countries and earned about Rs 164 crore in foreign exchange during the first half of this fiscal. The Steel Authority of India's integrated steel plant maintained its emphasis on producing value added products during the period.
The plant produced 187,000 tonnes of UTS-90 rails, 41,000 tonnes of TMT bars, more than 39,000 tonnes of EQ wire rods, 25,000 tonnes of boiler quality plates and 23,000 tonnes of high tensile plates during the period.
It produced 2,235,000 tonnes of hot metal, 2,091,000 tonnes of crude steel and 1,792,000 tonnes of saleable steel, registering a healthy growth rate of 2.4 per cent, 3.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively in these areas over the corresponding period last year. The captive iron ore mines also came up with best April-September production of more than 3.84 tonnes of iron ore.
The plant's major techno-economic indices also matched excellent performance during the period. Coke rate of 595 kg per tonne of hot metal, 1.27 tonnes per cubic meter per day of blast furnace productivity, 7.56 giga calories of energy consumption per tonne of crude steel and labour productivity of 126 tonnes per man per year were the best figures recorded.