Rourkela: Rourkela Steel Plant, a unit of SAIL, has been approved by ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) and DNV-GL (Det Norske Veritas-Germanischer Lloyd) to produce ship-building grades of steel.
This approval is for both ordinary as well as high strength grades of steel. RSP is already approved by LR (Lloyds Register) for producing LR grade plates, the company said in a statement today.
ABS and DNV-GL are ship-building classification societies for certification of the materials used for manufacturing ships. Approval from these societies is mandatory for producing the grades of any society, it said.
It is for the first time that RSP has been approved by these ship-building classification societies for steel making.
RSP now figures amongst very few steel makers in India listed on the websites of these societies as ‘Approved Manufacturers’, the release said.
There is a huge demand, especially in export market, for the ship-building grades of slabs and with these approvals RSP can now accept and serve in almost all the ship-building grades of different societies.
RSP is the only plant in SAIL which is exporting slabs and it has exported slabs to foreign customers to the tune of 2.5 lakh tonnes in the last 16 months.
With these approval certificates for producing ship-building grades, RSP’s potential for exporting slabs has been enhanced further.
The process of approval included plant audit by Indian office of the societies to assess the plant process and testing capabilities and witnessing the testing of samples of different grades selected by them.
After the audit, all test reports, documents and required information was sent to their head office. Post satisfactory review of all these audit reports, ‘Approval certificates’ have been sent from Houston, USA, in case of ABS and Norway in case of DNV-GL.
ABS certificate is valid for 5 years, the statement added.