Press Trust Of India
Jamshedpur, Jan 10: Tata Steel is hopeful of starting production in the new integrated greenfield steel plant at Kalinganagar in Orissa in the next few months and is expecting ‘consent of operation’ from the state government in couple of days time.
“The facilities at Kalinganagar will be ready by March/April and we are awaiting the ‘consent of operation’ from the Orissa government, which is expected in couple of days time,” Tata Steel managing director (India and south east Asia), T V Narendran told newsmen here today.
“The coke oven plant in our upcoming greenfield project in Orissa is ready and will be lit up in a week’s time,” Narendran said.
“We have around 2000 tones storage capacity here, which has come down to less than 1000 tones following the closure of the mines in Jharkhand and Orissa,” he said adding that as the mines have resumed production, efforts were on to build up storage capacity.
Narendran said he was hopeful that the company’s performance in the last quarter of the fiscal will be better than the third quarter as the productions in the iron-ore mines had resumed recently.
Earlier, Narendran interacted with the students – Tata Steel scholars, students preparing for entry into engineering colleges and nursing training candidates – the company supported to pursue higher professional courses.
Addressing the gathering on the occasion, Narendran advised the students to translate the opportunity into success with hard-work, which did not have any substitute, and do something good for the society.
Referring to the Tata Scholarship, Narendran said the government had recently made it mandatory to spend two percent of company’s profit on corporate social responsibility (CSR) but the founder of the private steel major had implemented it with the inception of the company.
“We are not doing it (CSR activity) for any legal binding but it is in the principle of the company to return to the society for its benefit,” he said.
Aimed at supporting bright SC/ST students pursue professional courses at reputed institutes, the Tata Scholars program was meant to enable them to lead a life of respect and equality, he said.