MSL plans to set up billet facility

New Delhi: Maharashtra Seamless (MSL) is planning to set up a 1 million tonne per year billet plant in Maharashtra to feed its planned seamless pipe expansion.

The backward integration project is part of MSL’s aim to increase pipe capacity to 5,00,000 tonnes per year from the current 3,50,000 tonnes, Steel Business Briefing reports stated.

Estimated to cost $44.8 million (about Rs 180 crore), the project involves relocation of the firm’s newly acquired pipe plant in Romania to India. The new works should be commissioned by 2010-2011, it said.

MSL currently has a 3,50,000 tonnes per year seamless pipe mill and a 2,00,000 tonnes per year welded pipe mill in Maharashtra’s Raigad district.

Under its expansion project, MSL intends to construct additional facilities for the production of 6,00,000 tonnes of sponge iron and a blast furnace to make 5,20,000 tonnes per year of pig iron.

It has already signed a contract with Chinese vendors for the blast furnace. The location of the new melting and semis plant is still being finalised.

Currently, Indian demand for seamless pipes is about 5,00,000 tonnes annually and is expected to grow 20-25 per cent.

MSL claims a 50 per cent market share, followed by Indian Seamless Metal Tubes with 25 per cent and Jindal Saw with 10 per cent, while the remaining 15 per cent is imported.