Indian state-owned steel producer Steel Authority of
India Limited (
SAIL) announced on December 1 that it commissioned the largest blast furnace in
India at its IISCO steel plant on November 30. Named ‘Kalyani', the state-of-the-art furnace has a volume of 4,160 cubic meters and has now become the biggest operating blast furnace in the country. Prior to this, the largest blast furnace in the country was installed by
SAIL at its Rourkela Steel Plant in 2013, with a volume of 4,060 cubic meters.
According to
SAIL, the start-up of this latest furnace is seen as the result of a massive modernization and expansion work in Burnpur for the installation of a state-of-the-art 2.5 million mt per year steel plant. The other major upstream and downstream units of the new steel plant, including coke oven battery, sinter plant, basic oxygen furnaces, continuous casters and the wire rod mill, have already commenced operations.