Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, May 02, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, May 02, 2002 |
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Corporate
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Announcements RSP blast furnace repairs completed on schedule Our Bureau
KOLKATA, May 1 ROURKELA Steel Plant (RSP), which is aiming at a 22.7 per cent growth in hot metal production in the current fiscal, has completed repairs of blast furnace no.4 on schedule. The timely completion of this job using robotics is considered significant since it is part of the strategy worked out by the loss-making unit to improve equipment availability and achieve capacity utilisation. Sources said during his recent visit to Rourkela, Mr B.K. Tripathy, Union Steel Minister, observed before a group of senior RSP officers that although RSP registered a definite improvement in physical performance in 2001-02, its financial performance still needed a lot of improvement and for a turnaround and it should aim at 100 per cent capacity utilisation. RSP, which has a capacity of producing two million tonnes of hot metal and 1.67 million tonnes of saleable steel, closed 2001-02 with a production of 1.5 million tonnes of hot metal and 1.35 million tonnes of saleable steel. The plant, whose losses for the last fiscal are estimated at around Rs 900 crore, has been asked by the Minister to aim for zero cash loss this fiscal and cash profit by 2003-04, the sources said, adding that RSP had been severely affected by the fall in prices of flat products. "Besides depressed prices, high interest and depreciation burden arising out of the investment in modernisation, payments on account of VRS and wage revision impacted the unit's bottomline," the sources said. Pointing out that there was some scope of optimism on RSP's future since there had been an increase in the prices of flat products from April 1, the sources said another round of hike was not ruled out. In 2001-02, RSP's products sold 14 per cent more as compared to the previous year and stocks were less than three weeks production, according to the sources.
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