Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited CMD foresees bright future for steel industry

Visakhapatnam: P Raychaudhury, CMD of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), said that infrastructure, construction sectors and urbanisation would enhance the consumption of steel in the country. The CMD inaugurated a two-day 7th Iron and Steel Making Conference on ‘Vision 2030- Mission 300 metres’ in the city on Friday.

Speaking on the occasion, Raychaudhury said the government’s ambitious programme of ‘rural housing’ targets to achieve one crore dwelling units in the next three years and usage of steel based structures would provide huge impetus to the demand of steel in the country.

He said that ‘Housing for all’ mission by 2022 would also lead to higher consumption of steel and added that the smart cities mission would  also provide core infrastructure, which would greatly promote the utilisation of steel for development. The government’s focus on ‘Make in India’ initiative is also expected to give fresh boost to the steel consumption, he added.  

The CMD visualised a bright future and the steel industry should dovetail its efforts to improve operational efficiency in terms of techno-economic parameters such as specific energy consumption, raw material consumption, waste recycling and waste energy recovery by bench marking these indices with the best in the world.

AK Rath, CEO, SAIL (Durgapur Steel Plant), said that Durgapur Steel Plant is manufacturing steel alloy wheels for Rajadhani and Satabdi Express trains due to technological know-how and is in a position to supply special steel also for railways, therefore it has broken the technological monopoly of the Europeans.

Y Siva Sagar Rao, former CMD of RINL, said that the target of achieving 300 million tonnes is certainly challenging, but not unattainable. He said that GOI had taken up many ambitious infrastructure projects, therefore, there would be enough domestic demand by 2030.

Dr AS Firoz, Chief Economist, Economic Research Unit of Ministry of Steel, said that if India achieves the target of 300 metric tonnes by 2030, it would become a net exporter of steel.

He said that the demand for steel in the domestic market would be 227 million tonnes per annum by 2030, the remaining would be exported. Nirmalya Mukherjee, editor, Steel and Metallurgy magazine and convener of the conference, highlighted the steel scenario in the country and the target of achieving 300 million tonnes by the year 2030.