Modernisation of Steel Authority of India Ltd's (SAIL) Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has boosted capacity to 4.5Mt/yr hot metal and 4.3Mt/yr of crude steel.

The plant now boasts a 150 tonne blast oxygen furnace and a 1Mt/yr plate mill. In fact, the entire modernisation plan for the RSP, which includes a new ore bedding and blending plant, a 360 sq metre sinter plant, 7 metre coke oven battery, 4060 cubic metre blast furnace, 150 tonne BOF, 2,500mm slab caster and a new plate mill is completed and operational, claims the Indian steelmaker.

CS Verma, SAIL's chairman, and other senior officials from the leading Indian steelmaker, were present for what SAIL called the 'operationalisation' of the new BOF converter in the plant's Steel Melting Shop ll and the new rolling facilities of the new plate mill.

Verma said, "The commencement of operation of these two major units at RSP is a shot in the arm of the company towards completion of its ongoing modernisation and expansion plan."

He said that the company has ambitious plans to further expand the RSP as part of the company's overall vision of attaining 50Mt/yr by 2025. The plan is to take RSP to 10.8Mt/yr.

• For the period April to May 2014, the Rourkela Steel Plant produced 430kt of saleable steel, up 24% over the same period the previous year. During this period, the RSP produced 537kt of hot metal, a growth of 36.3% over the previous year. Crude steel output was up 30% to 480kt.