Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), the only entity of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) producing rails, has crossed the 1 million tonne (MT) mark in cumulative production of rails as on January 21, and moving closer to completing the 1.35 MT order of Indian Railways for the current fiscal.
Bhilai Steel Plant has, for the first time, crossed the figure of 1 million tonne in rail production, as the capacity had increased after commissioning of new Universal Rail Mill (URM) in 2017. The State-of-the-Art Universal Rail Mill at Bhilai Steel Plant rolls out world’s longest 130 metre rail as single piece.
Bhilai Steel Plant already had Rail and Structural Mill (RSM) and before commissioning of Universal Rail Mill, which supply world class rails in lengths upto 130 metre to IR. After URM, BSP has an installed capacity of 2 million tonne per annum.
In the last financial year, the BSP missed the target marginally. As against the demand of 1 MT, it could supply 985,000 tonnes of rails to the IR. However, in current fiscal it is optimistic about fulfilling the order placed by IR. “Since more than two months are left and the plant has recorded best-ever production, the company is optimistic to complete the entire IR order,” BSP spokesperson said.
The Plant has registered significant growth of over 37.6 per cent in total volume of rails produced so far in FY 2019-20 over corresponding period of last fiscal year. Cumulative production of rails from URM in current fiscal year till January 17, 2020 was 406,361 tonne, thereby recording growth of 50.8 per cent over production recorded by URM in corresponding period of last fiscal year.
Even RSM recorded growth of 29.7 percent over corresponding period of last fiscal year by producing 579,540 tonnes of rails.