India has given approval to
Japanese company Nippon Steel
Corporation to supply CRGO steel
to India. The approval has been
granted to Nippon's Hirohata Steel
Works. The licence will be issued once
the required fees are remitted by
Nippon, it is learnt.
JFE Steel Corporation, also from
Japan, is the only other firm that has
been supplying CRGO to India under
licence, it is reliably learnt. India's
market for CRGO steel is estimated at
$2 billion per year, and is expected to
grow in line with requirements of the
power sector. CRGO steel is a critical
input for production of power and
distribution transformers, and can
account for up to 50 per cent of the
transformer's cost of production.
India has not been able to produce
CRGO steel locally for years on end.
There have been sporadic attempts
but nothing has borne fruit as yet.
India needs around 2.5 lakh tonnes of
CRGO annually and an estimated 70
per cent of this is in the form of
imported scrap CRGO. Such inferior
material causes transformers to fail
faster debilitating the country's
power distribution infrastructure.
Last year, public sector entities
Steel Authority of India, Bharat
Heavy Electricals and Rashtriya
Ispat Nigam decided to set up a joint
venture to manufacture specialgrade
steel including CRGO and
CRNGO steel. To be set up with an
investment of Rs.3,000 crore, this is
expected to be India's first unit for
production of CRGO and CRNGO
steel. The three companies are
believed to be in talks with global
suppliers of this technology. In the
early 1990s, Steel Authority of India
had made an abortive attempt to
produce CRGO steel at its Bokaro
plant in Jharkhand.
In another development, Posco of
Korea that is building an integrated
steel plant in India has indicated that
it could also produce CRGO and
CRNGO steel. It may also be
mentioned that UK-based Corus
Steel, which was acquired by Tata
Steel in 2007, is amongst the world's
select producers of CRGO steel.
With a view to clamping down the
use of inferior scrap CRGO, the Union
steel ministry last year promulgated
an order necessitating all CRGO steel
used in India to bear BIS certification.
This move is seen to be bringing
results, industry players observe.