Originally incorporated as Vesuvius Refractories in September, 1991, the name was subsequently changed to Vesuvius India Limited in November, 1992. The Company was promoted by the Vesuvius Group, UK, which presently holds 55.57% stake in the Company, in association with Biswadip Gupta. The Company is primarily engaged in the manufacturing and trading of refractory goods. The Company also provides services in relation to refractory goods.
The Vesuvius Group develops innovative and customised solutions, often used in extremely demanding industrial environments, which
enable its customers to make their manufacturing processes safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. The Group has a worldwide presence, serving customers through a network of cost-efficient manufacturing plants. These include flow control solutions, advanced refractories and other consumable products and increasingly, related technical services including data capture.
The company came out with a public issue in Sep.'93 to finance the setting up of an unit to manufacture 3000 tpa of specialised refractories. Later in 1996-97 it came out with a right issue at a premium of Rs 30/- per share to the existing equity shareholders in the ratio of two equity shares for every five equity shares held.
The company installed a mixing plant for backward integration in the manufacturing process, and a second plant to expand the production capacity. These measures initiated to achieve better cost control have paid off. Initially, the company used to import the required mix from its parent, the Vesuvius Group Ltd, UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cookson Group Plc. This had resulted in high costs and low margins for the company. However, with facilities to produce the required mix in India, these costs have fallen.
The company acquired the assets and manufacturing rights of KSR International (India) Ltd for a consideration of Rs 21 millions. It also acquired the monolithic plant at Visakhapatnam from Carborundum Universal and also assigned the technical know-how from Answer Technologies Inc, USA for manufacture of Blast Furnace Casthouse Refractories and General Purpose Pumpables.
In 2000-2001 the company has ventured into non-steel industry with its monolithics business using new technology.
The company has acquired the crucible manufacturing unit of Diamant Carbon & Graphite Products Ltd during March 2003 at Mehsana,Gujarat.The technology has been sourced from Vesuvius,Germany.This is third manufacturing unit of the company.Crucibles are used in the Non-ferrous industry and this acquisition enhances the foray into the non-steel sector.
The Company expanded the installed capacity of Refractories(Shaped) during the year 2004 by 90600(Pieces) and with this expansion,the total capacity rose to 419600(Pieces).
The Mehsana and Visakhapatnam Plants were commissioned which commenced commercial production in 2005-06. A new manufacturing factory was commissioned in December 2007 near existing factory at Visakhapatnam, which became fully operational. Commercial production of precast shapes in the new facility commenced from December 22, 2007 and tap-hole clay from April 29, 2008. A number of steel plants were commissioned with caster refractories - the notable ones being thin slab caster at Bhushan Steel & Power Limited and the new slab caster at Bhilai Steel Plant in 2008.
Three new casters at customer sites were commissioned with Vesuvius tundish refractories during 2009. The Kolkata plant expansion was commissioned in Apr' 12. The LD3 CSP caster-1 at Tata Steel was commissioned in February, 2012. The Company provided the entire tundish refactory and application for this caster. The entire refactory job for the new 1.2 million tons per annum pellet (MTPA) plant of BMM Ispat which was commissioned was provided by the Company during the year, 2012. Similar turnkey refactory supply and installation was done at Essar Steel's 6 MTPA iron ore pelletisation furnace in Paradip. The largest boiler gunning repair work was done for JSW Energy at Barmer during the year.
The Company commissioned Phase IV expansion of Kolkata Plant in December, 2022. In FY 2023, the Company expanded its solar
power generation capacity. Two new rooftop solar power facilities of 250 kWP and 130 kWP were commissioned for Kolkata and Vizag plants, respectively. Following these installations, their total solar power generation capacity reached 1,694 kWp, representing nearly 19% of total consumption.