JSW Steel, India’s largest steelmaker with a capacity of 18 million mt/year, confirmed undergoing a long maintenance in one of its strands at its Cold-rolled Mill Complex 1 located at Vijayanagar plant in Karnataka.

The CRM1 complex, with a capacity of 1.8 million mt/year, was built in 2008 and needed repairs, and is expected to run partially from January 2020 to May 2020, to be able to produce electrical steel from the CR substrates.

“Exports of CR will reduce going forward, and there is a possibility of selling surplus HR to the [domestic] market,” a source at the mill confirmed. “But we don’t wish to reduce electrical steel production.”

Domestic and export volumes of CRC are likely to emanate out of the 2.3 million mt/year CRM2 complex, which is technologically more advanced. The maintenance is timely, given India’s slowing automobile sector and excess capacity of CRC in domestic market, market sources said.

“Our CRC exports will not be more than 40,000 mt per month for the next 4-5 months,” another source at the mill said. “HRC exports will also reduce to 70,000 mt per month and will not be as large as 150,000 mt that we did previously.”

JSW's production from April-October amounted to 9.33 million mt, down 4.3% from 9.75 million mt in the corresponding period of 2018, as several of its blast furnaces were shut in October.