Pursuing growth with responsibility

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: Steel Authority of India Ltd (Sail) with about 13 MT of annual production is India’s leading steel-making company. Having fully integrated iron and steel making plants, it produces both basic and special steels for domestic construction, engineering, power, railway, automotive and defence industries and for sale in export markets.

The company manufactures and sells a broad range of steel products, including hot and cold rolled sheets and coils, galvanised sheets, electrical sheets, railway products, plates, bars and rods, stainless steel and other alloy steels.

The steel behemoth produces iron and steel at five integrated plants and three special steel plants, principally located in the eastern and central regions of India and situated close to domestic sources of raw materials, including the company’s iron ore, limestone and dolomite mines. Almost all its plants and major units are ISO Certified.

With technical and managerial expertise and know-how in steel making gained over four decades, Sail’s Consultancy Division (SAILCON) offers services and consultancy to clients world-wide. It has a well-equipped Research and Development Centre for Iron and Steel (RDCIS) at Ranchi which helps to produce quality steel and develop new technologies for the steel industry.

The government of India owns about 86% of Sail’s equity and retains voting control of the company. However, the PSU, by virtue of its “Navratna” status, enjoys significant operational and financial autonomy.

The company initially aimed at increasing its annual hot metal production capacity from 13 million tonnes (MT) to 20 MT by 2011-12. But following amalgamation of Iisco in February 2006 and likely mergers of RINL, NINL, and MEL and firming up of growth plan for its speciality steel plants, its has revised the target to 23 MT. The expected investment would be around Rs 40,000 crore.

During the current financial year, Sail would hike its hot metal capacity by just 2mt and expects to finish the fiscal year selling 14.5mt of steel. The growth plan foresees the company’s finished steel production of mild steel from its five integrated steel plants being raised to a level of 17.6 MT per annum, which means that semis will form only 8% of its product basket by 2011-12.