India’s Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) or Vizag Steel recently restarted its second blast furnace whose operations were stopped in mid-April amid COVID-19 lockdown. It was shut to avoid stockpiling inventory and adverse market condition, as per Davis Index sources.
The state-owned steelmaker is expecting to increase the production by around 7,000mt of hot metal per day till the end of July. Till now, company was operating with a single blast furnaces producing around 6,500-7,000mt of hot metal per day. The company has three blast furnaces each having a production capacity of about 7,500mt hot metal per day.
RINL’s third blast furnace is still shut and a call to restart will be taken depending on the market conditions.
In May and June 2020, company’s steel production was about 160,000mt and 183,000mt, respectively. Its inventory level was close to around 0.5mn mt by the end of June.