Power holiday by Andhra Pradesh governement affetcs RINL's production at Vizag

NEW DELHI: Production at state-run Rashtriya Ispat Nigam's lone steel-making facility at Vizag is getting hampered due to once-a-week power holiday imposed by the Andhra Pradesh government.

"The Government of Andhra Pradesh has declared a power holiday for 24 hours per week. This is greatly hampering production," RINL Chairman and Managing Director P Madhusudan said in a recent communique to the steel ministry. However, despite the power shortage, RINL achieved the best-ever monthly production of 3.49 lakh tonnes liquid steel recording a growth of 13 per cent over March, 2013.

"... the production in March would have been even better, but for the power restriction," he added.

RINL requires around 280 MW power in a month. While the company meets a major portion of the demand from captive sources, it needs 30-40 MW power from the grid to fire its blast furnaces. The company has taken up the matter for a solution with the state's chief secretary and the chairman of the state-run power transportation company.

A company spokesperson said that RINL hopes to get at least 30 MW power from captive sources within a couple of months which would help it bring down reliance on the grid to almost nil. RINL has three blast furnaces. At present, two furnaces are operational as maintenance work is going on in the third one for raising its capacity to 3,800 cubic meter from 3,200 cubic meter.

The power requirement for RINL would not go up much immediately as it plans to take up maintenance work in another blast furnace once the first one stabilises. However, the demand will go up substantially after the completion of current phase of expansion to 6.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 2.9 mtpa now. It has also prepared a feasibility report for enhancing the capacity further to 12 mtpa with Rs 30,000 crore outlay.