Jindal Stainless to Expand Group’s Capacity to 3.5 million tonnes

Indian largest stainless steel maker, Jindal Stainless will start operation of new plant in 2011-12 to expand the group’s production capacity to around 3.5 times at annual 2.5 million tonnes. The firm postponed the schedule one year later than original plan due to slow market. The firm tries to improve the cost competitiveness by acquiring mines of chrome and manganese while the firm expands low nickel products including 200 series grade.

The director N. C. Mathur said to a reporter of Japan Metal Bulletin the firm builds new plant with 1.6 million tonnes of annual production capacity and develops chrome mine in Orissa. The firm also builds ferroalloy plant with 600,000 tonnes of capacity for high carbon ferrochrome, ferromanganese and silicomanganese and major power station.

The firm expands existing Hisar plant by 70,000 tonnes to 720,000 tonnes of annual steel making capacity and by 150,000 tonnes to 350,000 tonnes of cold rolling. The firm also expands the cold rolling mill by 90,000 tonnes to 150,000 tonnes of capacity in Indonesia. The firm, however, decided to freeze Vietnamese chrome mine development including 60,000 tonnes of ferrochrome plant.