India; JSW Steel to Restart Facilities on 15th April

Sajjan Jindal led JSW Steel is gearing up to recommence full scale operations at all its units from April 15 after the lifting of lockdown orders.

Industry observers are hopeful of withdrawal of lockdown measures in the hinterland where many manufacturing plants are concentrated while curbs may still be in force for cities and urban locations beyond April 14.

Earlier on March 25, JSW Steel had apprised the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on its decision to scale down or suspend production.

"Considering the evolving scenario of complete lockdown with exception to certain specified essential activities, the manufacturing operations in all of our locations have since been either scaled down or suspended (in certain locations). Consequently, the capacity utilisation is expected to go down significantly during this period of lockdown. The company has taken the decision to scale down/suspend production to support the cause of containment of the pandemic Covid-19 notwithstanding the exception to manufacturing units with continuous operations and the units producing essential commodities", the company had noticed the BSE.

JSW Steel reported 3.97 million tonnes of crude steel production for Q4 FY 2019-20. The Company's crude steel production during January and February 2020 in aggregate was higher than that of the previous year by one per cent. The slowdown in economic activity due to unanticipated break out of pandemic COVID19 and consequent nationwide lockdown in the later part of March 2020 led to a sharp fall in production across the plant locations.

The company achieved 97.3 per cent of revised production guidance of 16.50 Million tonnes of FY 2019-20. The company could have almost achieved the revised guidance if there were no such exceptional events viz COVID19.

From a single manufacturing unit in the early 1980s, JSW Steel Ltd, today, is one of the foremost integrated steel company in India with an installed capacity of 18 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), and has plans to scale it up in India and overseas.

JSW Steel's manufacturing facility at Vijayanagar, Karnataka is the largest single location steel-producing facility in India with a capacity of 12 mtpa. The Company has been at the forefront of state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology, research and innovation while laying the foundation for long-term growth. The steel maker has strategic collaborations with global technology leaders to offer high-value special steel products for various applications across construction, automobile, appliances and other sectors.