Tata Steel plays the long game in India's infra boom

livemint.com:

MUMBAI , NEW DELHI : Tata Steel Ltd is looking to capture India’s infrastructure boom by doubling the manufacturing of long steel products used in construction over the next six years, a top company executive said. Currently, three-fourth of its capacity is in flat steel, used in automobiles and consumer goods. The company will boost capacity at its recently acquired Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) to 5.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from the present 1 mtpa, said Ashish Anupam, vice-president, long products at Tata Steel.

It will also install multiple electric arc furnaces, including one already under construction at Ludhiana, adding around 2 million tonnes of extra long-product capacity. This will take Tata Steel’s total long products capacity to 10-11 mtpa by 2029-30 from 5.3 mtpa at present, Anupam said in an interview. The entire project may cost ₹35,000 crore.

“If I look at FY30—we have a seven-year runway—longs would be close to about 10 to 11 million tonnes, ballpark," he said. He clarified that this was still at a planning stage, and no formal proposal has been presented to the company’s board. Currently, Tata Steel has 5.3 mtpa of long steel capacity out of its total set-up of around 21.6 mtpa in India.

This capacity is spread across NINL (1 mtpa), Jamshedpur (3.3 mtpa) and Usha Martin (1 mtpa) facilities. “If I look at Tata Steel, in 2019, the company was only 3.3 MTPA in longs out of a basket of around 21 MTPA. And that was primarily because Tata Steel’s portfolio was predominantly flat steel.