TISCO defers closing of its blast furnace

TISCO defers closing of its blast furnace

The Tata Iron & Steel Company (TISCO) had previously announced that it would rebuild its main blast furnace, namely ’G' to increase its iron production capacity with its current fiscal. TISCO has recently announced that it has decided to postpone closing of its main blast furnace with the capacity of 1.2 million tons for rebuilding it by August-September, 2004 period to prevent disruption of targeted annual steel production at a time when steel sales are quite high. TISCO, while rebuilding its ’F' blast furnace last year had spent Rs 300crore and increased its steel production capacity by 50% to 0.9 million tons. The cost of rebuilding of ’G' blast furnace is expected to be Rs 500 crore plus to that of ’F'blast furnace and probably rebuilding will require a three-month shutdown. Out of six blast furnaces of the plant,'F'and ’G' furnaces cover 50% of TISCO's steel production.