India's Tata Steel has invested 270 billion rupees ($3.23 billion) to expand crude steel capacity at its facility in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the company said on Friday. ($1 = 83.5200 Indian rupees) (This story has been corrected to fix an error in the headline and paragraph 1,

The new blast furnace is equipped with state-of-the-art features for a longer life along with an eco-friendly design to improve the steelmaking process.

The Phase II expansion of the facility, which commenced commercial production in May 2016 is supported by a ₹27,000 crore investment, the steelmaker said in an exchange filing.

Tata Steel has commissioned India's largest blast furnace at its Kalinganagar plant, increasing its production capacity to 8 million tonnes per annum. The Rs 27,000 crore expansion project will be completed by December 2024.

The new blast furnace, with a volume of 5,870 m3, is equipped with state-of-the-art features for long campaign life and an eco-friendly design to optimise the steelmaking process. The blast furnace will also have a zero-process water discharge plan with rainwater harvesting.