At a time when the steel industry is witnessing a marginal growth, JSW Steel has planned a capital expenditure (capex) program worth Rs 7000-8000 crore.
Speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a material science event in Gandhinagar, Sajjan Jindal, chairman and managing director of JSW Steel stated that the company has planned capex of Rs 7000-8000 crore which will continue to grow in near future. Stating the example of Ispat acquisition, Jindal said that the company will be looking at both organic and inorganic growth. Jindal, however, denied plans to buy Bhushan Steel’s Odisha plant.
Jindal attributed the marginal growth in steel industry to projects being stalled especially due to environmental issues raised by the previous government.
“The industry has been suffering because of over capacity world over, especially China. In India, the steel industry has not been growing much in the last three years. It is growing at even much slower pace than India’s GDP growth. In the previous government, projects were stalled because of various reasons including environmental issues that impacted lot of green field projects as well as brown field expansion. Now with the new regime there is a rethinking on various environmental issues and they are redrafting the laws. With issues being taken up afresh and with the ‘Make in India’ campaign, I am sure these projects will develop soon,” Jindal said, while adding that it will take about two years before new capacities come up on the ground.
Talking about the Government of India’s target of 300 million tonnes of steel production by 2025, Jindal reiterated that the ‘Make in India’ campaign will have to be realised to achieve the same.
“For this, India will have to take leapfrog to go to the next level. As a country, we have to leapfrog the technology if we have to achieve 300 million tonnes,” said Jindal while adding that JSW Steel is leapfrogging in technology by planning the world’s largest blast furnace of 5500 cubic metre.
“The blast furnace project is right now on the drawing board. Right now it is being designed to create a blast furnace which will produce 5 million tonnes of metal. This will be the largest blast furnace, even larger than the ones in Japan and Korea,” he said.
The blast furnace is being set up at an estimated cost of Rs 2500 crore and is likely to come up in three years.
The company has also commissioned in Vijayanagar in Karnataka a 2.3 million cold rolling complex at an investment of Rs 5000 crore with very high cutting edge technology which will produce very high strength alloy steel for the automobile industry.
According to Jindal, the strength of the steel can go upto 970 MPa and reduce the weight of the car by 30 per cent and thereby reduce fuel consumption.
This is a third of its kind plant in the world as of now, with the previous two being in Japan.
Jindal said that the industry has made representations to the government over Chinese steel dumping and has, therefore, demanded anti-dumping duty on steel.
Meanwhile, when asked about JSW Energy’s Gujarat plans, Jindal said that while there were plans earlier, the Gujarat government was now not very keen on power projects citing surplus power in the state.
Source: http://www.business-standard.com/