Tata Steel plan for port Talbot to lead to huge savings: Koushik Chatterjee

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Port Talbot plant will see the UK government make one of the largest-ever investments in the steel industry as they collectively move towards sustainable production. The steelmaker will be setting up a three-million-tonne electric arc furnace (EAF) at Port Talbot, which will not only lower carbon emissions, but will also be high on profitability. Tata Steel will save as much as 150 on every tonne of steel that it will produce at this plant, which in turn, will boost its operating profits to 8-10%, chief financial officer and executive director Koushik Chatterjee tells Nikita Periwal in an interview.

Edited excerpts:
Tata Steel was initially looking at a support of 50% of the capital expenditure along with some operational expenditure from the UK government. Is the current proposal satisfactory?
The original configuration that we were looking for was a much larger capital expenditure. Two things have happened.

We have reconfigured the project to be more capital efficient so that we retain parts of assets that can be upgraded, and capex can be made smaller. The grant also became higher. So, we have bridged the gap to make it more viable.

There is support in the form of policies as well. For example, the carbon border adjustment mechanism was not on the table initially. But in our conversations and on the government's own initiative, the government has moved on the consultation in March 2023, and has started the ball rolling.