Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel reported lower steel production in September quarter mainly because of a blast furnace shutdown at the company's Vijaynagar plant in Karnataka, it said in a release today.

"Production at Vijayanagar works was shut for relining and is expected to be re-commissioned early December this year," said the Mumbai-based primary steel producer.

In the period under review, crude steel production of JSW Steel stood at 3.25 million tonne, down one% from same period last year.



Production of flat steel products, used in the auto division, declined 2% to 2.57 million tonne, while long product division saw output rise 15% to 0.64 million tonne, said the company.

Meanwhile, at Salem, where the company has runs 1 million tonne facility, JSW Steel said during a normal routine maintenance work at one of the blast furnaces, a minor leakage of blast furnace gas has affected employees working on maintenance jobs. Due to this, the employees had to be taken to the hospital and are being treated. However, there have been no fatalities, it stated.

Consequently, the plant was under shut down from September 28, following a directive from the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board for around two weeks and the plant restarted October 10 on revocation of closure notice by the concerned authorities.

The JSW Group company achieved cumulative crude steel production of 6.65 million tonne during Apr-Sep witnessing a 4% growth over the corresponding period of last year.