Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) is the first shore based integrated steel plant Public sector in the country located at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The plant was commissioned in August 1992 with a capacity to produce 3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of liquid steel. The plant has been built to match international standards with state-of-the-art technology, incorporating extensive energy saving and pollution control measures. VSP has an excellent layout capable of expanding upto 16 MTPA.

Presently expansion to 6.3 MTPA liquid steel is in progress. Within a short period of time since its commissioning, the plant achieved high levels of performance in production and technological norms. Right from the year of its integrated operation, VSP established its presence both in the domestic and international markets with its superior quality of products. It has been conferred with the honour of “Mini Ratna” by Department of Public Enterprises in the year 2006.  VSP has been awarded all the three international standards certificates, namely, ISO 9001:2000, ISO 14001:1996 and OHSAS 18001:1999. The recent feather in the cap is the ‘Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) – Level 3’ certification from ‘Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University’, USA for implementation of IT systems in VSP. RINL-VSP is the first Indian steel plant to get this certification. The company has emerged as a good corporate citizen and has contributed substantially for the development of the region.

Technological facilities

The process of steel making is through the Blast Furnace – Basic Oxygen Furnace       (BF-BOF) route. VSP has the distinction of being the first integrated steel plant in the country to adopt 100% continuous casting in the Steel Melt Shop. VSP has a capacity to produce 3.4 Mt of hot metal, 3.0 Mt of liquid steel and 2.656 Mt of saleable steel. VSP has state-of-art technology facilities with many unique features as shown below:for the main production units through various modifications, upgradation and adoption of latest maintenance practices.

Technological Features

• Coke oven batteries with coke dry quenching
• Biggest Blast Furnace in the India (3200 m3 useful volume)
• Bell less top charging system in Blast Furnaces
• 100% slag granulation at Blast Furnace
• LD gas recovery system
• 100% continuous casting of liquid steel
• ‘Tempcore’ and ‘Smeltor’ cooling process in LMMM & WRM respectively
• Extensive waste heat recovery systems
• Effective pollution control mechanisms

Products

RINL-VSP produces various products in the Longs category. The principal products of VSP include rounds, structurals, bars, wire rods, blooms and billets of steel, pig iron and by-products like coal chemicals (ammonium sulphate, Benzol products etc) and slag.  The iron and steel products, which account for 98% of total sales, are used in construction, wire drawing industry, forging industry, foundry and re-rolling industry, whereas, coal chemicals are used in the chemical industry, ammonium sulphate as a fertilizer and slag in the cement industry.

The company has a wide network of 23 branch offices with stockyards and five regional offices for marketing in India. All stockyards, branch offices and regional offices, are fully computerized with client server environment, and are connected with head quarters to facilitate data communication in real time.

Physical & Fiscal Performance

RINL has been surpassing the rated capacities of its production units since 2001 and continued the same trend for the year 2008-09. RINL recorded capacity utilization of 104%, 105% & 102% in Hot Metal, Liquid Steel and Saleable Steel respectively. The harmonious industrial relations prevalent in VSP play a crucial role in the success of our operations and also ensure total commitment of the employee base of 17,500 employees. The details of the financial performance in the past three years are given below:

The second half of 2008-09 was marked by the sudden and striking impact of the recessionary trends on developed and developing economies, as a result of the global meltdown. Indian steel industry was also among the sectors that were impacted severely by the sudden slump in the market. Despite this, the Company could cross the landmark level of Rs10,000 Cr (2 b US$) turnover for the second  time  in a row  and recorded a net profit of Rs. 1336 Cr (0.27 b US$).

Awards

VSP’s operational efficiency and overall excellence has won the company many accolades like:

• Prime Minister’s Trophy for best integrated steel plant twice
• Winner of first Steel Minister’s Trophy
• Recognition as one among “India’s best companies to work for” – 2009 study by Great Place To Work Institute & Economic Times.
• VSP is the First Indian Steel Plant to get ‘Capability Maturity Model integrated’ (CMMI) level-3 certificate by ‘Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University’, USA.
• Won Gold & Bronze medals at ICQCC-2009 at Manila, Philippines
• VSP won the award for its ‘Exemplary usage of Information & Communication Technology  by PSU’s’ for e-governance by GoI
• Won the National Energy Conservation Award conferred by Ministry of Power for 7 years in succession for Exemplary performance in energy conservation
• Won awards for Excellence in Water Management, conferred  by CII – Twice
• Conferred with Gold medal for sustainable development in improving the quality of life in society and supporting the cause of science and technology at 95th National Science Congress, Visakhapatnam
• Won the Performance Excellence Award 2007 by IIIE
• RINL bagged the prestigious Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Puraskar for its outstanding contribution in the implementation of Hindi language
• Udyog Ratan Award to CMD, RINL for contribution to Industry

Expansion plan

RINL has excellent layout and other infrastructure facilities at its Vizag unit to expand the capacity up to 16 million tonne per annum.   Accordingly, RINL has drawn its long term directional plans to expand the capacity of liquid steel  to 16 million tonne in phases by the year 2020  to maintain its dominant position in the Indian steel market.  In the first phase RINL is focussing on expansion limiting to long products category which is required for infrastructure growth of the country and to diversify to flat products category in the subsequent phases. 

To achieve the above endeavour, RINL has already frozen the first phase expansion plan and is in the process to raise liquid steel capacity to 6.3 million tonne per annum by the year 2011.   With the completion of this phase of expansion RINL will be able to meet part of growing demand of construction steel like wire rod, bar, channel, angle, beam etc.

Major facilities coming up in the current phase of expansion are :

• New Blast Furnace  of 3800 cum capacity water cooled hearth bottom to produce 2.5Mt of hot metal with a state of art technology viz. inclusion of  profilometer, copper staves, PCI, TRT etc., 
• New Steel Melting Shop with two converters and three casters to produce liquid steel of 2.8 Mt capacity along with facilities to produce cleaner and high grade steel viz., secondary steel melting facilities, electro magnetic stirrer, auto mould level control, combined blowing along with pollution control measures etc.,  
• New Sinter Plant with 408 m2 sintering area along with circular cooler to produce 10950 TPD of sinter.
• New CRMP with two nos. 500 TPD vertical shaft kilns to produce 1000 TPD of calcined lime.
• New high speed Wire Rod Mill of  0.6 million tonne per annum capacity with wider range of products to meet the customer requirement. 
• Special Bar Mill of 0.75 million tonne per annum capacity   to meet the customer requirement of special steel, both in term of sizes and quality with a flexibility of supply in straight  and coil  form. 
• Structural Mill of  0.7 million tonne per annum capacity with high speed roughing stand to produce 75 – 175 mm structurals as per market demand.

 Summary Financials

P&L (All figures in US $ billion)

Balance Sheet (All figures in US $ billion)

more