The new universal rail mill at the Chhattisgarh-based Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) of Indian state-owned steelmaker SAIL is expected to receive a significant boost with an order volume of 420,000 mt from Indian Railways, with the latter planning to lay 25 percent more new railway lines in the fiscal year 2017-18 compared to the previous year, a SAIL official said on Thursday, February 9.
The official stated that the Indian national budget 2017-18 has proposed that the government owned and operated Indian Railways will lay 3,500 km of new railway lines during the coming year, an increase of 25 percent over the current fiscal year.
Considering that BSP’s universal rail mill is the country’s sole supplier of steel rails, the bulk of the estimated requirement of 420,000 mt of rail is expected to be booked with SAIL’s Bhilai Steel Plant.
The SAIL official said that BSP is already supplying an average of 700,000 mt of rail from its old mill but, with the commissioning of the new mill, the plant’s rail-making capacity had increased to 2 million mt per year.
BSP’s new rail mill commenced its first commercial shipments last month. The rail mill was constructed with an estimated investment of $176 million.