New Delhi: Essar Steel said Thursday it had become the first Indian producer to be approved by the government to supply steel plates to the Indian Navy for building warships. The heavy plates will be used for manufacturing state-of-the art naval ships.

"Essar Steel's plate mill became the first primer plate producer in the country to be recognized for indigenous development of steel for building ships for the Indian Navy…The company has received a prestigious order from Mazagoan Dock (MDL) to supply 13,000 tonnes of heavy plates," the company said in a statement.

This is the first time that MDL has placed an order for such a large consignment of steel plates from a domestic steel mill.

The order, the company said, follows a "stringent mill audit of Essar Steel's recently commissioned wide-plate mill conducted by teams from the Directorate of Naval Architecture (DNA), Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) and the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) of the Ministry of Defence."

Essar's plate mill, set up at a cost of Rs2,000 crore, has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes. The mill, which uses technology sourced from Siemens Voest Alpine, is the only steel mill in the country capable of producing 5-m wide plates conforming to global standards.

Such plates find applications in diverse segments, including defence, oil and gas, boilers and pressure vessels, heavy duty earth-moving machines, wind towers, mine protective vehicles and construction.

Essar Steel said it received the order after a stringent mill audit conducted by teams from the Directorate of Naval Architecture (DNA), Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) and the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) of the ministry of defence.

"This is the first time that MDL has placed an order for such a large consignment of steel plates from a domestic steel mill," the company said in a release.

Essar's steel plate mill has unique finishing facilities for production of normalised rolled, furnace-normalised, direct quenched, quenched and tempered plates, as also for shot blasting, austenising and accelerated direct cooling. The mill is capable of producing plates having thickness ranging from 5 to 150 mm, width from 900 to 4900 mm and length of 3 m to 25 m - all of which are import-substitution products.

Besides shipmaking, these ultra strong, ultra tough, weather resistant steel plates find applications in other defence equipment production as also in sectors such as oil and gas, boilers and pressure vessels, heavy duty earth-moving machines, wind towers, mine protective vehicles, construction etc.

Besides helping in import substitution, the plate mill has approvals from some of the world's leading ship-building, boilers, and yellow goods manufactures.

The plate mill has also received an approval from API to use its monogram on its steel plates, making it the first Indian company and the sixth company globally to receive such an approval.
 
Until now, these products were largely imported, but, with these approvals, India's dependence on imports will reduce significantly, Essar said.

Essar claims to be the only steel plant in the country with integrated facilities for heavy plates production, hot rolling, cold rolling, galvanizing and colour coating, with a full distribution business and retail outlets.

Essar Steel has facilities in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the UK, the UAE and Indonesia and a global steel capacity of 14 million tonnes.

Essar operates seven service centres in India and Indonesia with an aggregate capacity of over 4.5 million tonnes. It has also the largest distribution network of Essar Hypermarts, 592 retail distribution centers.