India: Could 3rd BF at RINL become operational from Oct?

If market conditions improve further then Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) could be restarting its third blast furnace (BF) by next month, which could take the average liquid steel production at this PSU to around 20,000 tonnes per day (tpd), a source informed SteelMint. "If market conditions demand, the third furnace may be restarted in the coming months. Not sure but, may be, it could restart from next month," the source said.

It may be recalled that RINL, the holding company of the Vizag Steel Plant (VSP), had to shut down two of its three furnaces during the throes of the lockdown in April. It resumed the first of its two close BFs in mid-July. And, at present, liquid steel production is averaging 13,500-14,000 tpd. The rated hot metal capacity of each BF is around 7,150 tonnes per day and in the pre-COVID-19 era, it had even touched 18,000 tonnes peak on some days. Even though the rated capacity of each furnace is 7,150 tpd, while running the BFs every month, mandatory maintenance shutdown/operational shutdowns have to be implemented. Therefore, the average production wavers at times.

Production up, sales down m-o-m

RINL's production of liquid steel increased almost 56% to 3.04 lakh tonnes in August, 2020 against 1.95 lakh tonnes in July, 2020.

Sales, however, were down around 14% to 3.35 lakh tonnes in the month under review against 3.9 lakh tonnes in the previous month. Within the sales corpus, exports in August 2020 amounted to 1.08 lakh tonnes against July 2020's 1.2 lakh tonnes. Overall, exports are decreasing among steel mills since they are looking to concentrate more on the domestic market where they expect demand to increase post-monsoon.

Inventory

RINL's inventory at the end of August 2020 stood at 2.80 lakh tonnes, -6.66% lower compared to 3 lakh tonnes at the end of July, 2020.

~Madhumita Mookerji