India's Tata Steel started expansion work on its Kalinganagar plant in Odisha state to raise capacity to 8 million mt/year, from 3 million mt/year, on June 22, a company spokesman confirmed last Friday.
Construction began on a 2.2 million mt/year cold roll mill which will allow Tata to make panels for automobile bodies.
The steelmaker is investing Rupee 235 billion ($3.45 billion) in the expansion and work will begin soon on a galvanizing line, a continuous annealing line and another blast furnace that will add 5 million mt/year to its production capacity. In financial year 2017-2018, the Kalinganagar plant produced about 2.8 million mt/year of crude steel.
The expansion work began a day after the Odisha government approved a proposal by Tata Steel to develop an industrial park on 1,735 acres of land at Gopalpur in Ganjam district.
Kalinganagar's expansion is part of Tata Steel's plans to double its production capacity in India from 13 million mt/year to 26 million mt/year by 2023.
In addition to Kalinganagar's 3 million mt/year plant, Tata Steel operates a 10 million mt/year plant at Jamshedpur.
The company is well on its way to reaching its expansion goal. In May, Tata Steel took over Bhushan Steel, which has a production capacity of 5 million mt/year.
