India: JSPL to Export Special Grade Billets from Angul

Naveen Jindal promoted Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) has decided to export special grade steel billets from its six million tonne capacity plant at Angul. The Angul steel mill recently achieved commissioning with the addition of four million steel to be produced though the blast furnace route.

"The special grade billets would be meant for exports, we will also despatch them to our Jharkhand plant", said Naveen Jindal, chairman of JSPL.

JSPL's 6 MnT steel mill at Angul will focus on speciality downstream products to cater to the requirement of both domestic and overseas markets. The steel company has the widest plate mill of 4.5 metres width and also the longest rebar mill of 1.5 metres.

JSPL is betting on its Angul operations to stage a turnaround and reduce its consolidated debt of about INR 46,000 crore. It expects to become relatively debt free over four to five years with the Angul steel project playing a key role in paring debt.

"The reason why he had high debt at JSPL is that we had to borrow a lot to pay additional levy of INR 3500 crore after the cancellation of our coal block in 2014. We are paying interest on it. But, in the next four to five years, we hope that we will be relatively debt free. Its very important to have a good balance sheet", said Jindal.

The Angul plant is expected to break from October this year, helping the debt laden company to generate cash flow.

The coal gasification based DRI plant along with the CGP (co-generation plant) will undergo a transient shutdown for four months with the blast furnace starting operations.

"In the next four months, we would completely rebuild it (the coal gasification unit), modify it and then start again from October and when we start, we hope to make it profitable", said Jindal.

JSPL's coal gasification plant, the only of its kind, had turned unviable since the company was banking largely on imported coal supplies. The steel maker imports 100 per cent of its coking coal requirement and almost 50% of the coal needed for power generation.