Essar Steel's plate mill has become the first primer plate producer in the country to be recognised for indigenous development of steel for building ships for the Indian Navy.

Set up at a cost of approximately Rs 2,000 crore, the plate mill has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes. Equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and controls - along with cutting edge technology sourced from Siemens Voest Alpine - the mill is the only one of its kind in the country capable of producing 5-m wide plates conforming to global standards.

A stringent mill audit of Essar Steel's recently commissioned wide-plate mill was 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.

Essar's plate products have now also been approved by the Indian Navy and the company has received a prestigious order from Mazagoan Dock (MDL) to supply 13,000 tonnes of heavy plates to build state-of-the-art ships for Defence.

The plate mill has unique finishing facilities that include normalized rolled, furnace-normalized, direct quenched, quenched and tempered (QT) plates, shot blasting, austenising and Accelerated Direct Cooling (ADCO). The mill is capable of producing plates with a thickness ranging from 5 to 150 mm, width from 900 to 4900 mm and 3 m to 25 m in length - all of which are import- substitution products.

The 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, construction. The plate mill has approvals from some of the world's leading ship-building, boilers, and yellow goods manufactures.

Essar Steel's products are ultra strong, ultra tough, all-weather resistant and suitable for war ships. Until now, these products were largely imported but with these approvals, our country's dependence on imports has reduced significantly, especially for critical sectors like Defence.

The plate mill has also received an approval from API to use its monogram on steel plates, making it the first Indian company and the sixth company globally to receive such an approval. Essar has also become the country's only steel plant with integrated facilities from heavy plates, hot rolling, cold rolling, galvanizing and colour coating, with a full distribution business with Steel Processing Centres and retail outlets under the brand Essar Hypermarts.