State owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) produced 3.2Mt of saleable steel in FY Q1 (April-June 2013) up 6% y-o-y.
Production of value-added steel reached 1.28Mt, a growth of 4% y-o-y.
Specific energy consumption fell to 6.57gcal/t crude steel an improvement of 1% y-o-y and blast furnace output improved 2% to 1.57t/m3/day.
During Q1, new projects valued at INR 27bn ($442.6M) commenced production including a new 7m coke battery and coke drying plant and a 2500mm wide slab caster at Rourkela Steel Plant, where a new 4060m3 blast furnace – the largest in the country − is also due to start up in August.
With this and other projects, annual output from SAIL plants for FY 2014/15 is expected to reach 19Mt crude steel from 14Mt this financial year (2013/14).