An announcement was made today by one of the leading players in the steel

industry, Essar Steel Ltd., regarding the approval given by the government to the

company for supplying the steel plates to the Indian Navy. The company said that

it is the first steel plates producer of the nation who has got a green signal by the

government for the same.

Under the terms of the deal signed, the company will be supplying the steel

plates for the purpose of building strategic warships. This order has been given

by Mazagoan Dock (MDL) and the order includes the supply of 13,000 tonnes of

heavy plates which will be utilized in the manufacturing state of the art ships for

the Indian Navy. This order is being tagged as one of the biggest order placed by

MDL in terms of the size of the steel plates consignment from a domestic steel

mill.

The company said, the order follows a "stringent mill audit of Essar Steel's

recently commissioned wide-plate mill conducted by teams from the Directorate

of Naval Architecture (DNA), Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL)

and the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) of the Ministry of

Defence." It further added that, "Equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and

controls- along with cutting edge technology sourced from Siemens Voest Alpine

-- the mill is the only one of its kind in the country capable of producing 5-metre

wide plates conforming to global standards."

Essar is the only existing company in India which has integrated facilities in

its steel plant and apart from this it even possesses a strong product line

including products like heavy plates, hot rolling, cold rolling etc. The finishing

facilities which are offered by the mill which include normalised rolled,

furnace-normalised, direct quenched, quenched and tempered (QT) plates and

accelerated direct cooling (ADCO), adds on to the specialised productivity of the

company.