OREANDA-NEWS. May 26, 2011. Essar Steel has made a breakthrough in securing a prestigious order from National Petroleum Construction Company for building offshore platforms, thus becoming the first entity in India to join the league of top plate mills of Japan and European Union.

It secured an order for API grade plates valued at USD 14 million from National Petroleum Construction Company, UAE. Essar Steel is the first Indian steel company and only sixth in the world to get approved for the use of the American Petroleum Institute (API) monogram on 2H, 2W and 2Y grades of steel plates meant for the hydrocarbon industry. This approval will not only help the company serve the domestic market but also open up opportunities to cater to international markets, including the Middle East and Europe.

National Petroleum Construction Company has won a major engineering, procurement and construction contract in India to build offshore platforms for ONGC for B series and N-15 & N-16 -6 wellhead platforms project at offshore Mumbai High Field.

Essar Steel will supply steel plates with width ranging from 2 m to 4 m for N15 and N16 parts of this critical project. Essar is the only steel mill in India which has developed the API standard hi-tensile grades up to 63.5mm for deep-sea offshore platform applications.

The order, the beginning of the new business opportunity,  will be executed by July 2011.This is an unprecedented order for an Indian steel company since this space is traditionally occupied by top plate mills of Japan and EU.

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 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. 

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 3m to 25m in length – all of which are import- substitution products.

As a result, it also became the first domestic steel producer to have been acknowledged by agencies of Union Defence Ministry and have successfully got the first for supplying heavy duty steel plates for Indian Navy’s war and supply ships.

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 has now 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.