New Delhi, July 10 :    New Delhi, July 10:  The 132-year old Kulti Iron Works, the oldest steel mill in the country, is to be shut down and almost all its 3,000-odd workers offered a voluntary retirement scheme. The government has taken this decision as part of its plan to restructure Indian Iron and Steel Company Ltd, a plan for which is to come up before the Cabinet tomorrow. Kulti Works, which was started in 1870 as an iron foundry, was called the Bengal Iron Works. Later renamed Bengal Iron & Steel Company, the mill started making steel in 1904 using small open-hearth furnaces, some four years before the Tatas set up their steel works at Jamshedpur, making Kulti the oldest steelmaker in the country. However, Kulti later stopped making steel and concentrated on iron castings. After nationalisation, the government started a spun pipe unit at Kulti, which turned out to be loss-making proposition, due to competition from new privately-owned ductile iron pipe units. Kulti Works currently has besides the spun pipe unit, a general casting shop with a capacity of 30,408 tonnes per annum, a heavy and mechanical foundry with a 7,200 tpa capacity, a light castings shop with a 7,000 tpa capacity, and a 4,585 tpa capacity steel foundry. SAIL chairman Arvind Pande had in fact prepared the unions for this shock treatment, calling them for a meeting at Calcutta some time back and bluntly telling them that Kulti was not viable as a business unit. The only union to oppose this at that time was the Congress led INTUC, whose leader Subrata Mukherjee had put forward an alternative proposal to turn into a central casting shop for SAIL, a plan which was found even more unviable. Steel ministry officials said the IISCO revival package, which is to be taken up by the Cabinet tomorrow, provides for a total of Rs 540 crore towards the VRS, as more workers have to be retrenched from its IISCO's mines as well as its main Burnpur works itself. Another Rs 230 crore will be spent on sinter and oxygen plants and repair of two blast furnaces, while Rs 111 crore will be spent in the colliery and mines. Some Rs 200 crore will be kept in reserve to meet anticipated losses over the next two years. While the state government is to give IISCO a Rs 200-crore relief by way of waiver of cess, royalty, electricity dues. The central government too will provide write off of past dues to the extent of about Rs 200 crore. IISCO as a whole made a loss of Rs 186 crore in 2001-2002, most of it due to its Kulti works, on a turnover of Rs 900 crore.