The mega stainless steel plant being set up by Jindals at a cost of Rs 7,000 crore at Duburi in Jajpur district will be completed in three phases. Ratan Jindal, vice chairman and managing director of JSL, said the first phase of the plant would be commissioned by March 2005.The first phase would comprise 1.5 lakh tonnes of ferro chrome, 80,000 tonnes of ferro alloys and eight lakh tonnes of stainless steel production, said Jindal, who attended the ’bhoomi puja’ of the project at Kalinga Nagar industrial complex, 50 km from here yesterday.“The second phase is a duplication of the first phase and in the final phase we will put up the hot rolling and cold rolling mills,” he said.The project envisaged 1.6 million tonnes of stainless steel production along with three lakh tonnes of ferro chrome, 1.6 tonnes of ferro manganese and ferro silicon and 500 mw of captive power generation when fully operationalised.The first module of ferro chrome and ferro alloys production would be ready for operation between February and July next year and would be followed by setting up of coke oven battery and blast furnace for steel production in two years, he said. Jindal said the first phase of the venture would cost about Rs 960 crore. The project would have a debt equity ratio of 2:1 and the equity portion would be arranged through internal cash flow, he said. Observing that the company wished to go ahead with the civil construction work immediately, he said it had already placed orders for the ferro chrome furnaces with SMS Demag of Germany.
