'Govt should reduce excise on steel, not squeeze producers'

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: Shyam Steel is one of the many new players in steel that have come a long way from their beginnings as merchant mills or foundries. Shyam Steel—which prefers to call itself an infrastructure company—began with structurals, moved on to ferro-alloys, added stainless steel, went back to sponge iron and is now expanding into integrated steelmaking, apart from power and cement. Brij Bhushan Agarwal, vice-chairman & managing director of flagship SEL talks to FE’s Somnath Dasgupta on his group and industry plans. Excerpts:

How did you begin all this, how did you start off?

I inherited the family steel business—we had a steel mill at that time, 1993-94. We made medium structures and narrow flats, and our group turnover was Rs 50 crore. During those early days, when survival was a question, we drew up a five-year roadmap and decided to increase sales from Rs 50 crore to Rs 200 crore.

By 1997-98, we had started backward integration and opened the ferro-alloys business by setting up a manufacturing facility at Burdwan. After 17 years of our existing business, we added a steel mill in the Howrah-Kona area. In 1999-2000, when we hit our target ahead of the five-year schedule, we planned to triple turnover in three years.

We were able to create an integrated steel facility, first at Burdwan, by adding a sponge iron facility and then by doubling our capacity in the ferro-alloys business and creating a new plant. We set up the first automatic steel mill for long product TMT bars within ten months.

How is your company ranked as a steelmaker?

Today, as a manufacturing facility, we may be the No 2 or No1 steelmaker in the state. It would not be correct on my part to say that we were the pioneers, but ours was the first company in eastern India to brand TMT in the secondary market, in 1998.

Then, we diversified into stainless steel. We created the first integrated stainless-steel facility in the country in 2001-02. We started with around 1 lakh tonne a year, and export half the production. In 2000, we were able to complete this vision. Then, in 2003-04, we created another roadmap: further backward integration by adding a non-conventional power plant from waste heat and biomass.