JSW to delay commissioning of blast furnace

Kolkata: The commissioning of JSW Steel’s massive blast furnace is unlikely to take place before March, according to Dr S.K. Gupta, Director of the company.

“We’re delaying commissioning in view of the present crisis in the steel industry,” Dr Gupta said while talking to newspersons on the sidelines of the international steel seminar here. “The current market is not conducive to absorb any extra production”.

Claimed to be the country’s largest, the blast furnace (size 4,300 cubic metres) has the capacity to produce 2.8 million tonnes of hot metal annually. This is the third blast furnace in the JSW plant.

Asked if there was already a production cut, he replied that one of the two operating blast furnaces, which was producing at the rate of about 3,000 tonnes of hot metal a day, was closed but it was being put back into operation.

The total capacity of the two blast furnaces is four mt of hot metal annually. As he pointed out, there was little activity now in regard to the Group’s proposed West Bengal plant in Salboni. “In view of the present situation, we’re going slow over our new investment plans,” he added.