Vizag Steel Plant resumes production
VISAKHAPATNAM: Hardly three weeks after cyclone Hudhud ripped through Port City, Vizag Steel Plant (VSP) has bounced back to life and revived its production lines. The plant, which suffered a production loss of around a staggering `800 crore, is now fully functional.
All the units, including the rolling mills, have revived production and the rolling in the light and medium merchant mill (LMMM) where furnace heating was restarted on October 30, has commenced here Sunday.
After the plant was completely shutdown on October 11 in view of cyclone Hudhud, the steel plant had to toil for nearly three weeks to restore operations.
The revival of raw material handling facilities, coke ovens, blast furnaces and steel melt shop-I (SMS) was completed by October 22, which commenced operations with the supply of emergency power by APTransco on October 16, 2014.
The second line for emergency power for the supply of additional 50 MW of power to VSP was connected and charged on October 27, with the help of APTransco and Power Grid, enabling the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) to revive Wire Rod Mill-I on October 31 and SMS-2 and MMSM Saturday.
The major water supply line to the power plant suffered a breakdown which lead to tripping of captive power generation and delayed the process of recovery by three days. The repair to the roof, which suffered extensive damages, has also been taken up by RINL on war-footing.
The Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is supplying necessary material on a priority basis, and the remaining work on sheeting is expected to be completed within two-three weeks, RINL officials said. RINL chairman and managing director P Madhusudan expressed satisfaction over the pace of work to revive the plant, despite various hurdles. He complimented the RINL collective for the safe and speedy revival of the plant.
The chairman expressed gratitude to outside experts for their timely guidance to RINL team on the revival activities. He also thanked the trade unions, steel executive association and other associations of RINL, the district administration, APTransco, Power Grid, Ministry of Steel, state and Central governments for their support to revive the plant.
News Posted: 2 November, 2014
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