Guj NRE steel unit flagged off
(Business Standard, Ahmedabad, December 29, 2005)

The steel plant of Gujarat NRE Coke Ltd in Kutch district at village Lunva has commenced production of hot metal, billets and steel rebars.

Production coincided with the first coal shipment from the company’s Australian mines to India. Gujarat NRE Coke Ltd (GNCL) was the largest non-captive manufacturer of low ash metallurgical coal in India.

On Thursday, it announced commencement of commercial production at the new steel plant at Lunva in Bhachau taluka of Kutch district. The plant was set up with an investment of nearly Rs 50 crore to manufacture billets, blooms, ingots and hot rolled products. The steel making facility would be manufacturing rebars from MS scrap, sponge iron, ferro-alloys and CI Scrap. It was in the process of setting up a captive power plant of 20 MW capacity. The steel plant and captive power plant were next to its coke manufacturing facility at Bhachau. The CPP would be using waste heat from the coke oven plant, leading to substantial savings in power cost.

Besides this, the company has already set up a wind farm with 25MW capacity in Kutch to supply cheap green power to the steel plant.