Monday, June 02, 2008

DEVELOPMENTS IN INDIAN METALLURGICAL INDUSTRY

H’ BLAST FURNACE

Tata Steel inaugurates India’s largest blast furnace

Tata Steel, the oldest Steel Company in India achieved a milestone on its 100h year of operation when the largest blast furnace in India was blown-in on Saturday, the 31st of May 2008 at its Jamshedpur plant. Mr. R. S. Pandey, the Union Government Steel Secretary, inaugurated the furnace operation. This blast furnace with a volume of 3800 cubic meters and a rating of 2.5 million tonnes per annum will produce over 7,200 tonnes of hot metal a day. The construction of this furnace was undertaken by the engineering firm Larsen & Tubro with technology provided by M/s. Paul Wurth in a short period of 25 months. With the addition of this furnace, the Tata Steel plant at Jamshedpur expects to increase its production capacity to 10 million tonnes by December 2010.

Sterlite acquires Asarco

Sterlite Industries (India), a subsidiary of London-based metal & mining group Vedanta Resources plc signed agreements on 31st May 2008 to buy the assts of Asarco LLC, a Tuscon-based mining, smelting and refining company. The 100 year old Asarco, previously known as the American Smelting & Refining Company, is the third largest copper producer in the U. S. which produced 2.35 lakhs tonnes of refined copper in 2007. The integrated assts of Asarco include three open-pit copper mines with an estimated reserve of 5 million tonnes of contained copper, a copper smelter in Arizona, and a plant at Texas with a copper refinery, rod and cake plant and a precious metals plant. The cost of this acquisition is reported to be 2.6 billion US Dollars.

(Source: The Hindu, June 1, 2008)