India’s Ministry of Steel has asked Steel Authority of India Limited’s Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) to increase capacity utilization as well as to ramp up installed capacity of its new Universal Rail Mill (URM) to tide over the shortage of rails faced by state-operated Indian Railways, a ministry official said on Friday, October 27.
The official said that the URM came into commercial production early this year with an installed capacity of 1.2 million mt per year. However, the ministry has asked BSP to bring forward its plans to increase the installed capacity to 2 million mt earlier than planned given the shortage of rails faced by Indian Railways.
The Ministry has also asked SAIL to expedite its original plan to increase the ultimate capacity of the URM to 7 million mt per year at the earliest date.
The official said BSP was expected to supply 1,145,000 mt of rail during the rest of the current fiscal year, Indian Railways will face a shortfall of around 314,000 mt during the financial year 2017-18.
Significantly, Indian Railways, to bridge the gap in domestic supplies, earlier this month floated a global tender to import 700,000 mt of steel rails.