Tata Steel on Tuesday unveiled plans to invest ₹50,000-60,000 crore over the next five years. This will be used to enhance the capacity of different units including ramping up its Kalinganagar plant to eight million tonnes, securing iron ore capacity of 50 million tonnes per annum, and enhancing the cold rolling capacity to 6.5 mtpa from 4.3 mtpa.

To beat the cyclical nature of the business, TV Narendran, Managing Director, said Tata Steel will focus on new and allied businesses such as production of low-carbon steel, composite material, graphene, medical materials, services and solutions.

Each of these has the potential to become a ₹1,000-crore business over a period. Most importantly, in most of these businesses, the company will not be competing on steel but on other materials altogether, Narendran said at an investors’ call on Tuesday.

The company targets doubling its capacity to 40 million tonne by 2030 largely through organic growth, he said. With the focus on ESG (environment, social and corporate governance) rating, the company plans to make 5 million tonnes of steel through the recycling route. It has already set up a recycling plant of 0.5 mtpa at Rohtak in Haryana. The company can set up a steel plant on 50-100 acres closer to the recycling unit using the electric arc furnace route instead of the conventional steel plant that requires 3,000 acres, he said

Tata Steel also plans to increase capacity of ductile iron pipes and tinplate to 1 mtpa each from 0.2 mtpa and 0.4 mtpa respectively. Tubes and wire production capacity will be increased to 2 mtpa and one mtpa from 1.3 mtpa and 0.45 mtpa respectively.

On average, the company plans to spend ₹10,000-₹12,000 crore per annum, excluding acquisitions. The company has invested ₹80,000 crore over the last years.

The company plans to reduce its debt by $1 billion every year. It has bought down its net debt to ₹75,390 crore as of March-end from ₹1.04 lakh crore.

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