India’s SAIL to notch highest ever iron-ore production

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is poised to close the current financial year with the highest-ever production of 19.2-million tonnes, from its captive iron-ore mines, a company official said on Friday.

He said the rising iron-ore production was in line with SAIL’s increase in hot metal production. The bulk of the incremental production of the raw material was contributed by a new mine that was opened up during the year at its captive iron-ore block at Taldih, in the eastern Indian province of Odisha.

Over the next year, the Taldih mines would be fully mechanised, with production to be ramped up to 4.2-million tonnes a year, he added.

Meanwhile, the country’s largest steel producer has taken up a project to develop minor iron-ore reserves to act as a "bridge supplies" until major projects are complete to ensure uninterrupted raw material supplies to its key steel mills.

It has started work with development of Dulki, a minor reserve as interim raw material source to its Bhilai steel plant (BSP), located in Chhattisgarh province, the official said.

He said the reserves from Dulki mine were very small and would be sufficient to feed BSP for only about a year-and-a-half.

But the development of the minor iron-ore reserve had become an imperative, as BSP’s existing linked iron-ore mine, Dalli Rajhara, also located at Chhattisgarh was fast depleting, he said.

Furthermore, the development of the Rowghat mine with estimated reserves of 511-million tonnes, which will also be linked to BSP, was running behind schedule and would not start production for another two years.

BSP produces 4.3-million tonnes a year of hot metal and plans to ramp output up to 7.5-million tonnes a year based on raw material supplies once the Rowghat mine was made operational.