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Competitiveness is the key as new capacities are being added in the steel sector, according to Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) CMD A.P. Choudhary.
Plants which cut down on costs and maintain quality parameters will have a bright future, as steel consumption in the domestic market is bound to increase substantially, he said.
He was speaking as the chief guest at a one-day seminar on steel industry in Andhra Pradesh organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here on Monday.
He said the Union Government had a target that by 2020 India should reach the second position after China in steel production.
“India is presently in the fourth position with 71 million tonnes (mt) and China in the first with more than 600 mt per annum. It will be a creditable achievement for India to get into the second slot, even though there will still be a vast gulf separating the first and the second,” he said.
He said the big challenge was to find raw material for enhanced capacities and upgrade infrastructure for production and consumption of the steel in the domestic market as well as for exports.
Special steels
He said India was in a position to produce special steels required for sectors such as ship-building and “we are inferior to none in technologies.”
There was, however, the need to spend more on R&D for more eco-friendly technologies of steel manufacture.
He said the growth of manufacturing sector was not taking place in Andhra Pradesh for the past four years and also not many industrial units (small and medium ones) were coming up in the vicinity of RINL.
“There should be more SMEs and ancillaries here,” he felt and added that RINL would support them. Currently, RINL was forced to source many components from other states, as there were no units nearby.
Rear-Admiral N.K Mishra, CMD of the Hindusthan Shipyard Ltd, said more greenfield steel units should come up in the country.
As for special steels required for ship-building, he said that for certain special steels the volumes required were so small it would not make sense to make them domestically.
Former CMD of RINL Y. Sivasagara Rao said steel units should have to strive a lot to produce steel in accordance with the international benchmarks and till then our products would not be really be competitive.
T.K Chand, Director (Commercial) of RINL and Chairman of the CII, Visakhapatnam zone, welcomed the gathering.
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