Tata Steel commissions blast furnace at Kalinganar plant under Rs 27,000 cr expansion project

New Delhi, Sep 20 (PTI) Tata Steel on Friday commissioned India’s largest blast furnace at Kalinganagar plant, which will help it increase the plant’s production capacity to 8 million tonnes per annum from 3 million tonnes per annum.

The company commenced the Rs 27,000-crore second phase of expansion of its Kalinganagar project in Odisha in November 2018.

Tata Steel on Friday successfully commissioned India’s largest blast furnace at Kalinganagar, the company said in a release.

Odisha has become Tata Steel’s largest investment destination in India with a total cumulated investment of over Rs 100,000 crore in the last 10 years, the steel major said in a statement.

Blast furnace is a key component of an integrated steel manufacturing unit which is essential to produce hot metal at a temperature of up to 1500 Celsius.

“The commissioning of India’s largest blast furnace at Kalinganagar is a momentous occasion for the steel industry, setting new benchmarks in capacity, technology, and sustainability,” Tata Steel CEO and MD T V Narendran said.

Tata Steel said that the new blast furnace, with a volume of 5,870 cubic meteres of inner volume is equipped with an eco-friendly design to optimise the steelmaking process.

The expansion project includes raw material capacity expansion, upstream and mid-stream facilities, infrastructure and downstream facilities including a cold rolling mill complex.

Tata Steel aims to complete expansion of its Kalinganagar project by December 2024, a company official had told PTI earlier. Along with its 8 MT of annual production capacity at Kalinganagar, the total output capacity of Tata Steel’s India operations will reach 26.6 MTPA. The company has an output capacity of 12 MTPA at its plant in Jamshedpur (including 1 MTPA acquired from Usha Martin), 5.6 MTPA at Tata Steel Meramandali (erstwhile Tata Steel BSL) in Dhenkanal, and 1 MTPA of NINL at Kalinganagar.