India's Vizag Steel Shuts 2nd Blast Furnace - Sources

Vizag Steel - one of India's largest finished long steel producers has temporarily suspended operations at its second blast furnace, SteelMint learned from its reliable sources. Prior to this, the company had shut 1st blast furnace towards end Mar'20.

So from roughly 11,000 TPD of hot metal production when two out of the three BFs were functional, RINL's daily production has fallen to the 7000 level and total production of semis was pegged around 5,000-5,200 MT.

The company has halted the operations of its second blast furnace at a time when the integrated steel sector is severely curtailing production by either blowing down or banking BFs amid the countrywide shutdown triggered by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Only blast furnace 1 at the Visakhapatnam steel plant of the company is currently operational out of the three BFs at the plant, informed a source. The furnace has a capacity of 7000 tonnes per day (TPD) of hot metal production. Currently hot metal production is 47-50 heats, SteelMint has learnt from sources.

The company has crude steel capacity of 7.3 MnT per annum. The company's finished long steel production was registered at 3.74 MnT in 2019 and 0.58 MnT in CY20 (till Feb'20).

Further, it's being learned from SteelMint sources that the primary mills are looking to further lower their capacity utilisation due to lack of manpower & piled up stock.

However, few other primary players are optimistic for recovery in finished steel demand as construction activities can resume under specific parameters i:e; conditional approval from next week after an announcement made by PM Narendra Modi where some activities have been permitted to kick-start the economy and provide job opportunities to daily-wage labourers.