Steel Industry will overcome present crisis: RINL Chairman and Managing Director P K Rath

Visakhapatnam: RINL Chairman and Managing Director P K Rath on Monday took stock of the situation on the company's financial front and suggested initiatives to stay afloat while reviewing the plant's performance and the current steel market scenario.

He expressed hope that the steel industry has a great future and will tide over the present crisis soon. He stated that the government continues to infuse funds through various initiatives for infrastructure projects, development of smart cities and railway projects. These initiatives are giving a ray of hope for improving in the next quarter. The sops announced by the government to stimulate the economy will further boost the steel market, he added.

Rath observed that producing steel at lowest cost is the need of the hour and is a prime requisite for sustainable growth and RINL is moving towards that direction to achieve global bench marks in improvement in techno-economic parameters such as specific energy consumption, raw material consumption, waste recycling, waste heat recovery, etc.

With steel industry being cyclical in nature, he stated that it is presently going through a slump. However, he added that the cost of production has remained high as the input raw material prices continued to be firm whereas the finished steel goods prices have plummeted by around 20%. Against this backdrop, RINL has been implementing an aggressive marketing policy to step up its sales and also to reach niche markets through its 24 marketing branch offices spread across the country, Rath mentioned.

RINL is giving an impetus to special steel production which caters to the needs of railways, automobile sector, engineering forging and fasteners segment etc in addition to producing steel for construction and fabrication sector through its state of the art high speed finishing mills, RINL CMD said.

Forging applications in auto sector and engineering segments, cold heading quality for fasteners segment continue to yield good returns. For the first time 430 MM rounds are rolled in the plant for flange applications, precious forging and railway wheel applications to cater to the market in Northern and Western India.

Exports

Exports of VSP products have enhanced in the last few months. Special thrust is being given to push additional volumes in neighboring and South East Asian Countries which will create a long-term customer base.

Cost cutting measures

To overcome the present recession in the market, RINL has adopted cost-effective measures which are yielding encouraging results. To be globally competitive, RINL has been adopting cost improvement technologies, optimisation of usage of raw materials and reduction in greenhouse gases emissions, etc.

For the first time, RINL achieved a daily shop average of Pulverised Coal Injection (PCI) of 150 kg/ton/Hot Metal in its Blast Furnace operations, a step towards a cost optimisation of hot metal production.

It is expected that with the new initiation of government like the Bharatmala Project, the massive roadways project for connecting India, the Sagarmala project, the Port Development Project, affordable housing scheme as part of housing for all, airport modernisation in cities and up-gradation of minor airports, there will be ample scope to increase the overall steel consumption and this will definitely augur well for steel industry to recover soon, the CMD added.