Mint reported that slowdown in India’s steel sector is spreading to medium and small enterprises, with several companies cutting production in response to lower demand. Such units make up about one-half of India’s total steel production but higher iron ore prices and weak demand have forced many to trim output since August. In some cases, production has been halved. Mr RK Goyal MD of Kalyani Steel said “There are no buyers in the market today. Sales are not happening. We have cut production by 25-40% in the last 15 days.”
Ludhiana based auto grade steel manufacturer Vardhman Special Steels plans to start cutting production from October. CMD Mr Sachit Jain said “We were lucky because we already had a scheduled plant shutdown. The plant has restarted now. We will be producing less than what we anticipated, maybe we will cut by about 30% but I guess we will be cutting less than our competitors.”
Mr PVS Rao, president of Karnataka Sponge Iron Manufacturers Association, which represents 64 units, said “We’ve reduced production over the last 2-3 months. Some people are doing maintenance shutdowns at plants even when it’s not needed. Salaries are being delayed by about 2 months after we started cutting production in July. We do about 10,000 tonnes a day of sponge iron production and we’ve reduced it by about 30% in the last two months. More steel mills will decide by September on whether they should cut production.”
Source of information