RINL made profit last quarter, CMD tells AGM

 Visakhapatnam: Atul Bhatt, chairman and managing director of RINL, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant informed the company’s annual general body meeting that with improvement in production levels and market conditions, the entity made a cash profit of Rs 81 crore in Q4, the last quarter of 2022–23 financial year.

The 41st annual general body of RINL (Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited), a Navratna PSU, met on Friday at its registered office situated in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant.

While the CMD chaired the meeting, steel ministry director Neeraj Agrawal attended the meeting as the authorised nominee of the Indian President.

Addressing the shareholders of RINL, Atul Bhatt maintained that performance of the company in FY 2022–23 continued to be impacted by global energy crisis, muted export markets and liquidity constraints.  The company had to operate only two blast furnaces. During April-October ’22, production from these two furnaces had to be restricted owing on availability of imported coking coals.

However, with reduction in imported coking coal prices and easing of liquidity position, RINL ramped up hot metal production from the two operating blast furnaces from the middle of November ’22.

“The steel plant achieved best production levels of 1.76 million tons for any two blast furnace operations since inception during the period December 2022 to March 2023,” the CMD added.