30 years and counting: How JSPL ascended heights, broke several records

The Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) has been building India and empowering lives for the last 30 years. JSPL, which started under the leadership of OP Jindal with steel-making operations, is now one of India’s finest companies.
JSPL’s journey began in 1989 when the foundation of the Raigarh steel plant was laid. Within a couple of years, it became one of the world’s largest coal-based sponge iron manufacturing plant with a production capacity of 1. 32 million tonnes per annum.

Spread across 2500 acres, the state-of-the-art JSPL Raigarh plant, today, produces up to 3.6 MTPA steel and has a mega coal-based sponge iron manufacturing facility.
“Initially, the plan was to set up just a DRI plant of 150,000 tonnes per annum. So, from 150,000 tonnes per annum plant, today this facility is the most important facility of JSPL and we have a capacity to produce 3.6 MTPA of steel,” said Naveen Jindal, Chairman, JSPL.

The Raigarh plant is a mega industrial wonder that boasts of a myriad of manufacturing strengths. It has a modern rail and universal beam mill, which is India’s first Head Hardened Rail Plant. The RUBM produces head hardened rails, a specialised form of rail tracks used in Metro, high-speed and bullet trains.

In fact, JSPL is the only Indian private player that supplies the long rails to Indian Railways. The mill also produces a wide range of products, varying from 121 and 260 metres rails.

Philosophy of JSPL was to use the domestic coal for sponge iron and Steel production. Similarly, we were producing power from available domestic coal resources for the nation at a very affordable price. Unfortunately due to change in policy Coal blocks were deallocated. We did not stop due to coal block deallocation and used alternative technology to produce steel through the blast furnace route based on imported coking coal. Now, overall we are at a level of 6.5 million ton per year of steelmaking, said Mr VR Sharma, MD, JSPL.