Company Announcement - Jindal Steel and Power Limited and SMS group www.sms-group.com have successfully commissioned its high-speed eight-strand billet caster at the Angul Odisha plant. The caster is the largest high speed billet caster in India. The JSPL and SMS group team has commissioned the plant within 13 months from ground-breaking.

The supplied billet caster is able to attain a speed of 3.6 meters per minute for sections of 165 x 165 millimeters and can produce 2.3 million tons per year. It has a casting radius of nine meters with eight strands, and is designed to cast low- and high-carbon, ball bearing and free-cutting steel. The casting format ranges from 130 x 130 millimeters to 200 x 200 millimeters. The casting mode is both open and submerged casting.

JSPL is already operating two six-strand and three eight-strand billet casters from SMS group. The caster at the Angul plant is equipped with ladle turret, tundish car with lifting and lowering device, CONVEX® mold tubes, mold stirrers and oscillators, overhead cross transfer, turn-over cooling bed and automatic torch cutter. The use of a rigid dummy bar with permanent head enables automatic disconnection of the hot strand and thus a reliable start of casting within very short restranding and machine preparation times. JSPL will benefit from this new high-speed billet caster with CONVEX® technology by lower operation costs. Matthias Ebneter, CEO of SMS Concast India, is confident that this technology will be implemented more and more in Indian plants in coming years. “Continuous improvement is the hallmark of our ideology,” Ebneter added. “We are committed to work out solutions that will help our customers to achieve a sustainable competitive edge. This experience will help us to further increase our share on a market which is increasingly characterized by competition and price.”

JSPL produces a wide range of iron and steel products including plates, parallel-flanged beams, medium sections, rails, rounds, rebars, wire rod and metal products. The company owns steel production plants in Raigarh, Angul and Patratu, India and in Sohar, Oman.