February 23, 2012: The commissioning of the new plate mill of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) is likely to be delayed "slightly" due to delay in civil construction work, a company source told ISMW.

"The new plate mill with expanded capacity to process 4 meter wide plates has been slightly delayed because of civil construction work. The construction work got delayed as foundation work took more than expected time because of rocks below the surface. The mill has currently a capacity to process plates of up to 2 metres," the source said.

The wider plates are in good demand in the market, but transportation is a challenge. It is used in ship building and infrastructure and the main buyers are defense industry, structural and railways (for wagon making) among others.

Besides the plate mill, RSP is working on making some more grades of special steel, the source said.

"We are already making Silicon Steel at SMS1, but with the installion of RHOV at SMS2 not only our capacity will increase, but we will be able to make clean and good steel such as extra deep drawing (EDD) steel," the source, said, adding, "EDD has been delayed a bit and will now be commissioned in March 2013."

Source: ISMW