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 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.

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.

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.