Visakhapatnam Steel Plant bleeds ₹30 crore daily as coke crisis deepens
Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate arm of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), is incurring daily losses of nearly ₹30 crore, driven by soaring global coke prices and the worsening condition of its coke oven batteries, according to senior plant officials.
The batteries, degraded through years of continuous use, have sharply reduced in-house coke output — a raw material indispensable to steel production. To offset the shortfall, RINL has been procuring coke from the open market at ₹39,000 per tonne, considerably higher than in-house production costs using imported coking coal.
Full-scale operations require around 8,000 tonnes of coke daily, demanding over 350 oven pushings. The plant has been unable to meet this target and is purchasing 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes from the market each day. Externally sourced pellets add further to the cost burden.
To reduce losses, plant management proposed idling one of the three blast furnaces and redirecting the freed gas to rolling mills to boost finished steel output. The Union Steel Ministry declined, reiterating that all three furnaces must stay operational — a condition tied to the Centre’s ₹14,000-crore financial support package for RINL.
Management has since shelved the proposal and tasked the coke oven department with maintaining at least 300 daily pushings, a target officials concede is difficult given the state of the equipment.
The bottlenecks have left around 15 lakh tonnes of steel blooms — semi-finished products awaiting rolling — accumulated on the plant premises. Rolling mill operations have been further hobbled by inadequate gas supply; even the piped natural gas (PNG) provided by Indane through the MedTech Zone falls short of requirements.
Plant authorities are now examining options to stabilise operations and stem the financial deterioration at the State-owned enterprise.