Tata Steel's Kalinganagar plant in Orissa will mainly produce flat products. A proposal in this regard is to be placed before the company's board shortly for approval.

“Once the board approval has been obtained, we will work out the details and firm up various configurations”, Mr T.V. Narendran, Vice-President (Safety & Flat Products), Tata Steel, told Business Line here recently. The Kalinganagar plant is to have a capacity of six million tonnes per annum.

Earlier, the management had debated whether to produce long-products or flat products at Kalinganagar, only to zero in eventually on flat products. The proposed Chhattishgarh plant of the company would produce more of long products, it has been learnt.

Right now, the company's Jamshedpur plant produces about four million tonnes of flat products, to increase to 6.8 mt within a year or so with the rise in the plant capacity. “By 2018, the company's production of flat products is projected to rise to 13 mt”, he observed.

Meeting auto sector demand

An estimated 25 per cent of the current production of flat products goes to meet the requirement of the automobile sector. “We're the single largest supplier of flat products to the automobile industry, meeting about 42 over cent of the demand”, Mr Narendran said. Asked if increased production would boost the company's share, he replied that the company would be happy to retain its share in a growing market and amid stiff competition, not only from other domestic producers but also imports.

He sounded bullish about the growth prospects of the country's automobile sector and attributed his optimism to several factors such as strong domestic demand despite not-so-satisfactory infrastructure, fairly developed auto component manufacturing base with strong supply chain management and the emergence of India as the manufacturing hub of small cars. “We have to be ahead of the growth of the automobile sector,” he said.

JV with Nippon Steel

Mr Narendran pinned a good deal of hope on the joint venture inked with Nippon Steel for continuous annealing and processing line (CAPL). “This JV, due to be commissioned in 30 months at Jamshedpur, will boost our cold rolled (cr) coil production to 2.2 mt from the present 1.6 mt and, together with the Maharashtra unit, the total production will be about 2.4 mt,” he said pointing out that the cold rolled coils were mainly used in passenger cars and hot rolled (hr) coils in commercial vehicles.

Referring to the Kalinganagar plant whose work has been delayed, he said, “we've made a bit of progress on the ground at Kalinganagar and a clearer picture will emerge within the next two to three months and we've done a good deal of community work there.”

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