L&T consortium bags Rs1,400-crore order for Vizag Steel Plant expansion

Larsen & Toubro and its international consortium partners, Paul Wurth Italia have bagged an EPC package valued at over Rs1,400 crore for the expansion of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam''s (RINL) Vizag Steel Plant. L&T''s contract-value in this project is around Rs 810 crore.

RINL has embarked upon a capacity expansion at Vizag in line with the National Steel Policy envisaging production of 110 million tonnes per annum of steel in the country by 2019-20.

Accordingly, it invited bids for installation of a new third blast furnace to double its capacity to 6.5 MTPA of hot metal from the present of 3.2 MTPA, and is the largest single-value EPC order by placed by RINL, which had attracted global competition from Chinese, Korean and Russian firms.

L&T will construct a state of the art 3800 cu.m. unit blast furnace with a hot metal capacity of 2.5- million tonnes of per year. Once it is commissioned it will be the second biggest blast furnace in India. ECC, L&T''s construction division, will execute this contact in consortium with Paul Wurth Italia within a guaranteed time frame of 30 months.

The scope of work for L&T includes complete detailed engineering apart from certain areas of basic engineering based on the process engineering being supplied by Paul Wurth, but complete indigenous manufacturing and supply of equipment as stipulated bu RINL.

In addition, complete site services including the civil and structural works and erection of equipment will be undertaken by L&T, with specialised supervision being provided by Paul Wurth.

Paul Wurth Italia (the merged entity of Paul Wurth of Luxembourg and SMS Demag of Italy) is the world-leader in iron-making technology through the blast furnace route. By introducing the latest technology in iron making. L&T will once again demonstrate its commitment to design and execute large sized blast furnaces in the Indian steel industry.

This consortium is already executing a similar sized blast furnace order for Tata Steel in Jamshedpur where the project is scheduled to be commissioned by early next year.