Tata Steel completes 2006-07 on a thumping note

Kolkata, Apr 2(UNI) Tata Steel completed 2006-07 on a thumping note and stepped into its centenary year with stupendous all round performance.

A company release here today said the year witnessed stabilization of operations after completion of the expansion projects, raising Jamshedpur capacity to 5 mt pa.

The year was marked with best ever hot metal (5.55 million tonnes), crude steel (5.05 Million tonnes) and saleable steel (4.93 million tonnes) production, it said.

The crude steel production crossed the five million tonnes mark for the first time, making the Jamshedpur plant of Tata Steel the only plant in India to have produced more than 5 million tonnes.

''Since the month of December 2006, production of hot metal has been over half a million tonnes per month and Tata Steel was the only steel plant in the country to achieve this feat,'' the release said.

The production of raw materials division also had gone up to keep pace with the increasing demand of Tata Steel and its Indian subsidiaries. The West Bokaro division for the first time dispatched 1.9 million tonnes of clean coal at 13 per cent ash.

The reduced ash level in own coal contributed significantly in substituting the more expensive imported low ash coal.

The release said fiscal 2006-O7 was a record breaking year for both the flat and long products. Flat products achieved the highest ever sales to the automotive segment at 0.85 million tonnes, up by 28 per cent as against last year sales of 0.67 million tonnes, it said.

The domestic sale of long products was reported at 1.3 mt, 27 per cent higher than the figure of last year while the industry growth rate in India was around 8 per cent.

The turnover of branded products was Rs 4479 cr, up by 17 per cent as compared to previous year.

UNI