A major fire broke out at the materials handling area at integrated Indian steelmaker Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) on April 17. Three conveyor belt units and some buildings were damaged. The fire did not spread to other parts of the plant due to the timely shutdown of the conveyor belts.
Investigations into the cause of the fire, which took five to six hours to put out, are still continuing. The fire was the third mishap at the steel plant within a week; the others involved a gate failure at casting machine No. 2 and the spilling of liquid steel at blast oxygen furnace No. 3.
VSP indicates that it has enough iron ore stocks for 20 days' production.