Cuttack, April 11: The expansion programme of the Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys (IMFA) Group has gathered speed with the commissioning of the 27-MVA furnace at the Choudwar complex.

The furnace expansion programme is being carried out at the plant site of Indian Charge Chrome Limited, the country’s largest producer of ferro alloys with 130-MVA furnace capacity backed by a captive power plant.

The Rs 50-crore furnace expansion is part of an overall expansion plan entailing an investment of Rs 600 crore to increase the group’s ferro chrome production capacity by 1.4 lakh tonnes per annum.

IMFA Group managing director Subhrakant Panda said, “The group has become the leading exporter of value-added products earning foreign exchange in excess of $50 million in 2005-06.”

“The expansion plan would provide direct employment to nearly 4,000 people, fetch Rs 150 crore in terms of forex earnings and contribute Rs 60 crore annually by way of taxes and duties,” Panda added.

The furnace expansion is being done in three phases at a cost of Rs 120 crore.

While the first phase has been completed, the second and third phases of the furnace expansion programme are targeted to be completed by 2007-08 and 2009-2010 respectively.

IMFA has been a beneficiary of a Rs 1000-crore restructuring package approved by the Industrial Development Bank of India in 2004.

The IMFA Group made a turnaround in 2002-03 with a record production of 1,00,368 tonnes of ferro-chrome, the highest ever by an Indian company in a single year. In 2003-04, it registered an increased production of 1,02,368 tonnes of ferro-chrome along with 35,965 tonnes of ferro-silicon.