India’s JSW Steel produced 2% less crude steel year-on-year in October at 1.05 million tonnes. This was due to a planned shutdown of a blast furnace at its Dolvi steelworks for seven days that month, Kallanish learns from the company. Flat products output fell 5% in October to 828,000t, while longs production was up 3% to 153,000t.

JSW’s India-based operations recorded 11% y-o-y growth in crude steel output in its second fiscal quarter (through September) to 3.3mt, its highest ever quarterly production (see Kallanish 22 October). Merchant long products output was up 5% to 480,000t, and semis output up 55% to 120,000t; however, saleable flats production fell 5% to 2.47mt.

The steelmaker is carrying out trial runs of its new 1.2m tonnes/year bar mill at its flagship Vijayanagar steelworks. The steelworks, which has a flat product capacity of 5m t/y, will see its wire rod and TMT bar capacity increase to around 2m t/y when the new bar mill comes on line.