SAIL's coking coal imports to touch 35 million tonne by 2025

State-run steel maker SAIL's coking coal imports will touch 35 million tonnes by 2025 when the targetted production capacity is projected to touch 50 million tonnes, a company official said.

"Presently, SAIL's coking coal imports is around 12 to 13 million tonnes. This will go up to 18 million tonnes by 2017-18," executive director of the company P Raychaudhury said.

When the projected steel production capacity was to touch 50 million tonnes per annum as per Vision 2025, the quantum of coking coal imports would reach 35 million tonnes, he said at the CII Logistics Colloquium here on . Regarding exports of steel, he said that presently SAIL was exporting 0.5 million tonnes of steel, which was supposed to go up to two million tonnes post expansion.

To handle the increasing amount of imports, the SAIL official said that the company was looking at other ports besides Haldia, Vizag and Paradip. SAIL had already started importing through Dhamra and Gangavaram ports as well, Raychaudhury said.

Quantum of limestone import of SAIL currently was one million tonnes, he said.