India’s NMDC Steel Limited has commenced trial production of hot rolled coil (HRC) at the rolling mill of its 3 million mt per year capacity greenfield steel mill at Chhattisgarh, a company statement said on Tuesday, July 4.
NMDC Steel, a subsidiary of iron ore miner NMDC Limited, said that it has commenced charging 70 mm semi-rolled plates sourced from Steel Authority of India Limited’s Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) on a trial basis followed by ‘ghost rolling’ and other synchronization.
The rolling mill supplied by Danieli, Italy, will produce 2.89 million mt per year of coils, plates and sheets of various grades once stabilized.
However, no information is available on start of the firing up of the blast furnaces of the greenfield steel mill project which has suffered several time and cost overruns.
The Indian government has already announced that it will start inviting financial bids from private investor towards privatization of the steel mill once the blast furnaces are fired, to secure better valuation of the assets.