Kolkata, Nov 06: Notwithstanding a boom in the steel industry, Ruias promoted Essar Steel Limited is unlikely to operate upto 100 per cent capacity to produce 2.40 million tons of steel during the current financial year. ESL managing director Prashant Ruia today said that the company was aiming to produce over two million tonnes of hot rolled steel during the current fiscal.

"We expect to produce over two million tons of hr steel this financial year and reach our full production capacity of 2.4 million tons in 2004-05," Ruia told reporters here.

This comes at a time when most of the country's steel companies, including Tisco, sail and Ispat, were expecting to produce more steel than their installed capacity.
Commenting on the progress of Stemcor of UK's Cold Rolling Mill (CRM) project at their property at Hazira, Ruia said, "Stemcor is likely to commence first phase of 0.5 m ton CRM project by the next year."


"Commencement of Stemcor's CRM project would help in increasing consumption of captive hr steel being produced by ESL," he said.


Stemcor was setting up a CRM adjacent to Essar's steel plant at a cost of about Rs 250 crore. The UK-based company had floated a new firm for channelising its investment in the project.
ESL too was encouraging various international/ domestic companies to set up facilities for upstream/ downstream/value added products adjacent to its steel plant.

Bureau Report