RINL calls bids for operating its forged wheel plant in UP

Visakhapatnam: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), has sought proposals from interested bidders for operation of heat treatment, machining, testing facilities and maintenance of forged wheel plant set up at Lal Ganj near Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh.

The plant, which rolled out products sometime ago after an investment of around Rs 2,000 crore by the cash-starved Visakhapatnam-headquartered, was sanctioned during the Congress-led UPA government. Rae Bareli is represented by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi who retained the Nehru-Gandhi family stronghold in 2019 general elections by a huge margin.

RINL has set October 13 as the deadline for submission of bids. The bids will be opened the next day.

It has set up a forged wheel plant at Lal Ganj, Rae Bareli, UP with a capacity of 1 lakh forged rail wheels per year with a provision to expand the capacity up to 2 lakh wheels per year. RINL has an off-take agreement with Indian railways to supply different kinds of wheels every year. "The investment of such a huge amount in a distant land itself due to political compulsions is wastage of money for RINL. Instead, RINL which has a huge land bank, could have established the plant on the compound of VSP itself in Visakhapatnam," Padi Trinadha Rao, general secretary of first registered and recognised union of VSP, told Bizz Buzz on Thursday.

Forged wheel plant of RINL is a highly sophisticated and automated plant; input material for wheel making is CCR (continuous cast round) which are transported from main plant-Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. Two numbers of vertical working cold circular sawing machines are provided for cutting of input material CCR. Saw machine is carbide tipped saw blades as well as blades with exchangeable tips with Saw blade diameter of 1350-1.560 mm. The machine can cut a round of diameter 350-500 mm. Work piece is clamped hydraulically at the in-feed and out-feed side. The plant is also equipped with a wheel rolling/ extrusion device operating on oil-hydraulically without mandrel.

The objective of this E01 is to find prospective bidders having expertise, experience, resources and interest to take up the "operation of heat treatment, machining, testing and maintenance of forged wheel plant Lal Ganj."