JSW Steel to invest up to Rs. 8,000 cr annually on capacity addition.

Even after witnessing three years of muted growth in the steel sector, Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel is set to continue its expansion.

The company has lined up investments worth Rs. 7,000-Rs. 8,000 crore every year towards capacity addition.

Speaking at an industry event recently, Jindal, Chairman of JSW Steel, said the company will add new steel capacities by way of both expansions and acquisitions.

Rejecting reports that the company was in talks to acquire debt-laden Bhushan Steel's Odisha plant, Jindal said: 'We have no plans to acquire Bhushan Steel. It has large leverage and also heavy debt burden.' 'We did Ispat Industries acquisition recently. Now, we are doing brownfield expansion at the same location,' he said on the sidelines of the Materials Engineering, Technology (MET-2014) exhibition in Gandhinagar.

Jindal further mentioned that rapid upgrade in technology is required if the country aims to achieve 300 million tonnes (mt) of steel production from the current 80 mt.

As part of it, JSW has started taking steps to create a blast furnace with the size of 5,500 cubic metres.

This will require investment worth Rs. 2,500 crore.

The company has already set up a blast furnace with size of 4,019 cubic metres. 'The blast furnace project is right now on the drawing board. It is being designed to create a furnace that will produce 5 mt of metal. This will be the largest blast furnace in the world, even larger than the ones in Japan and Korea,' he added.

JSW Steel recently set up a Rs. 5,000-crore cold rolling complex at Vijayanagar in Karnataka.

'The 2.3-mt cold rolling complex with cutting edge technology will produce alloy steel for the automobile industry. Value addition in products and applications will drive the next level of growth for the steel sector,' he told reporters.




HBL