The Steel Authority of India Ltd has tendered out the blast furnace package tied to the planned expansion of its IISCO Steel Plant in Burnpur, signalling that the ₹45,810 crore project — expected to more than double the unit’s capacity — is moving into a decisive phase.
SAIL has awarded the BF package to a consortium of Danieli Corus earlier last week, with the target completion of 41 months. The BF is capable of producing 4.3 million tonne of hot metal, forming the core part of the 4.08 mt expansion undertaken by SAIL.
Post completion, the IISCO capacity is projected to go up to 7.1 mt from the current level of 2.5 mt. The company said the BF will be one of the most advanced in the country and for SAIL, marking a major technological leap in efficiency, energy recovery and environmental performance.
The public sector steel major had received the environmental clearance from the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change earlier on June 4, kicking off what could be the largest industrial investment in a single project in Bengal to date.
Since then, the company has signed contracts for sinter plant, pellet plant, a new lime and dolomite calcination plant (LDCP) and now the BF package — all linked to the process of converting iron to crude steel. However, as the blast furnace anchors both output and efficiency in an integrated mill, the step marks a substantive shift from design to implementation in one of SAIL’s most ambitious upgrades.
The SAIL management had guided investors post second quarter results on October 30 that the design engineering will be progressively followed by physical active supplies and physical ground activities at Burnpur. Effectively, it indicates that FY27 will see the steel major making the big-ticket capital expenditure for the Bengal project.
The new plant will come up where the old unit of The Indian Iron & Steel Company, built by Bengali industrialist Biren Mookerjee pre-independence, used to be. The plant has been demolished to make way for the new unit.
SAIL has complete possession of the land for the unit, which would ensure that the PSU is unlikely to face major roadblocks as it did when the first phase of modernisation and expansion was kicked off during the UPA government under Manmohan Singh. The unit was finally commissioned in 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A major differentiator with the existing plant will be the focus on flat products, which is used in automobiles and consumer durables. Advanced facilities such as hot strip mill (HSM), pickling line coupled to tandem cold mill (PLTCM), continuous galvanising line (CGL), continuous annealing line (CAL) and colour coated line (CCL) are being planned, encouraging a slew of downstream industries in the large as well as MSME sector where the employment generation could be significant.
The company estimates that employment generation from the proposed expansion itself is going to be 500 direct and 6,500 indirect jobs during the construction phase and 3,092 direct and 2,408 indirect jobs during the operation period.