Jindal South West Steel Ltd. (JSW Steel), India, recently signed a contract with Siemens for a new blast furnace (No. 3) and for the modernization of an existing blast furnace (No. 1) at its iron and steel works located in Toranagallu, India.

The VAI Division of the Siemens’ Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) Group will design and supply equipment for the No. 3 Blast Furnace, which will be India's largest. VAI will also be responsible for the modernization of the No. 1 Blast Furnace. The order volume, which includes advisory services, totals EUR 28 million.

In an ambitious capacity-expansion program, JSW Steel intends to increase its steel production to ten million tonnes at the Toranagallu site by the year 2010. As part of this program, VAI was awarded a contract for the total design, supply of critical components and technical services for both the new No. 3 Blast Furnace and the modernization of the No. 1 Blast Furnace. The contract will be implemented by the VAI's daughter company VAI Industries (UK) Ltd, Stockton-on-Tees, U.K., supported by VAI Engineering & Automation (P) Ltd., Kolkata, India.

The new blast furnace, which will feature an inner volume of more than 4,000 cubic meters, will be India's largest. The VAI project scope encompasses energy-efficient hot-blast stoves, environmental control systems (top-gas recovery, waste-gas cleaning, casthouse and stockhouse dedusting, and slag granulation), and furnace cooling (based on copper and cast-iron stave technology for long operational campaigns). VAI’s scope also includes pulverized coal injection and the supply of modern casthouse equipment (high-pressure clay guns, hydraulic taphole drills, etc.).

This project is the latest of a series of contracts awarded to VAI at the Toranagallu site which, includes two Corex plants, one slab caster and a hot-strip-mill upgrade. With start-up of the rebuilt and new blast furnaces scheduled for January 2007 and March 2008 respectively, the ironmaking capacity at JSW Steel will be increased by three million tonnes to a new total of seven million tonnes.

JSW Steel (formerly Jindal Vijayanagar Steel Ltd.), is one of India's largest steel manufacture and part of the O. P. Jindal Group. The integrated iron and steel producer is located in Toranagallu in the Bellary-Hospet district of Karnataka, India. The company produces a wide range of coated and non-coated carbon steels which find use in the construction and manufacture of automobiles, white goods, power stations, transformers, dams, bridges, ports, railways refineries, oil barrels and drums, storage tanks, machines, buildings and transmission towers.

VAI, a division of the Siemens Group Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S), is one of the world's leading engineering and plant-building companies for the iron and steel industry as well as for the flat-product-rolling sector of the aluminum industry. VAI, derived from the company Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau, Austria, provides a comprehensive range of supplies and services for all related technological processes and integrated automation solutions for the entire life-cycle of metallurgical plants.

The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) is the integrator of systems and solutions for industrial and infrastructure facilities and global service provider for the plant and projects business covering planning, installation, operation and the entire life cycle. I&S uses the electrical and technical products of other Siemens Groups in order to enhance productivity and improve competitiveness of companies in the sectors of metallurgy, water treatment, pulp and paper, oil and gas, marine engineering, open-cast mining, intelligent traffic systems and industrial services. In fiscal 2004 (to September 30) I&S employed a total of 30,000 people worldwide and achieved total sales of EUR 4.290 billion.