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Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders that are lighter in weight, earthquake-resistant plates, deep-drawing steel for the auto sector, and special plates for naval applications are some of the new items in the product portfolio of SAIL, India’s largest steel producer.
The company will invest over Rs 7,000 crore for value addition and product mix improvement under its Rs 70,000-crore modernisation and expansion plan. “After the expansion and modernisation, the proportion of branded products in SAIL’s portfolio will go up to around 25 per cent from the current 15 per cent,” C S Verma, chairman and managing director of SAIL, told Business Standard.
Branded products in SAIL’s retail channel will also increase from half a million tonnes a year (mtpa) to one mtpa after the modernisation and expansion of SAIL’s IISCO Steel Plant and the launch of a new cold-rolling (CR) mill at Bokaro Steel Plant. The state-of-art CR mill at Bokaro will increase the supply of CR coils to auto majors and component manufacturers.
SAIL has developed a new variety of steel to be used in LPG cylinders, which will bring down its weight by about 2.5 kg. A conventional domestic cylinder is made from 2.9-mm thick steel sheets and from one tonne of steel, 62 cylinders can be made, each weighing around 15 kg.
New steel
“The new steel with 2.4-mm thickness developed and produced at SAIL for LPG cylinders has a higher strength-to-weight ratio. Now around 70 cylinders can be made from a tonne of steel,” Verma said.
SAIL has already supplied over 50,000 tonnes of the new steel to a firm for fabrication of export-quality cylinders.
SAIL also plans to offer galvannealed steel and cut- to-size and ready-to-use materials, which are mainly used in the auto sector.
Other steel companies such as Tata Steel, Essar and JSW are also taking steps to tap new sectors with customised/specialised steel.
According to Verma, the bad times for the industry are over and things will start improving from now as “our fundamentals are strong”.
