India’s Bhushan Steel has added a 3Mt/y blast furnace at its plant at Angul in the state of Odisha (Orissa) to increase total steelmaking capacity to 5.2 Mt/y.

The former capacity of Bhushan Steel was 2.5Mt/y using eight coal based kilns to make DRI at Angul which is melted in a Conarc electric arc furnace.

An invested of over Rs 150000M ($2.77bn) was made to expand the plant.

The company is also in the process of increasing its cold rolling mill capacity to about 2Mt/y at the same time. The capacity expansion was originally estimated to be completed in October 2012 but was delayed due to various reasons.

It produces finished steel products including hot and cold rolled coil, galvanised coil and color coated coil from its three manufacturing sites in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha.