These ambitious targets have been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, but now many Indian steel companies have revisited their capacity expansion plans to achieve them. Two primary functions of India’s Ministry of Steel are to promote the development of infrastructure required for enhancing the country’s steel production and to facilitate adequate availability of raw materials for the steel industry from domestic and overseas sources. Most of India’s future steel output will be provided by its top four producers: Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), JSW Steel, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL), and Tata Steel.

AME expects India’s crude steel capacity growth to accelerate until 2030 as the government provides significant investments to achieve its NSP targets. AME expects India’s crude steel production for 2021 to be 120Mt, up 19.4% year on year. Moving forward, from 2022 to 2030 AME expects India’s steel output to see an annual average growth rate of 6.5%.

In the medium term, China will remain a major contributor to the global steel supply in absolute terms due to its large population. However, its output growth is expected to slow to an annual average rate of 0.5%. Meanwhile, in the medium term, AME expects the annual growth in steel supply from the rest of the world to average 2.2%.

SAIL

SAIL's crude steel capacity for 2021 is approximately 21Mt, with a forecast capacity of 50Mt by 2030. Most of this expansion is expected to come from five of the company’s steel facilities, Bhilai, Durgapur, Roukela, Bokaro and IISCO, which will account for total crude steel capacity expansion of 28Mt. SAIL’s plan to expand to 50Mt will require total investment of US$8.35bn. The company has already completed land surveys in Rourkela and Bokaro and has land parcels available to support brownfield expansions.

SAIL’s product mix is highly diversified, with the Roukela and Bokaro steel plants producing flats and Durgapur and IISCO steel plants producing a combination of both longs and semis. The Bhilai plant produces all three.

SAIL’s current modernisation and expansion plans include replacing production via the twin-hearth furnace (THF) with production via the BOF-LD converter route. Production via the ingot teeming route will be replaced by the continuous casing production route. SAIL will also enhance its production with two new blast furnaces, one 4,060m3 and the other 4,160m3. The modernisation is expected to increase SAIL’s market share and add new products, including automotive products, universal beams/heavy beams, and wider plates in of 4,300mm.

SAIL’s ongoing capital expenditure projects currently do not have any associated timeframe. The breakdown of this allocation includes various aspects including expansion of existing capacity with planned investment of US$5.28bn. Other investments include value-added/product mix improvement, technological upgrades/modernisation, and de-bottlenecking and environmental improvements with investment of US$950m, US$474m and US$1.645bn, respectively. An additional US$1.385bn in capital expenditure is allocated for the augmentation of SAIL’s raw material facilities.

SAIL’s Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has finalised its capacity investment of US$690m to commence its expansion plans. New equipment includes a coke oven battery #7 with capacity of 0.78Mt, to be located adjacent to coke oven battery #6, as well as a new steel melting shop #3 with capacity of 1.2Mt and a normalising furnace with capacity of 0.3Mt to service the demand for niche products.

SAIL will invest approximately US$400m into SAIL Bokaro Steel Plant to increase the plant’s crude steel capacity by 1.5Mt. This will also enable a thin slab caster to be installed, while other investments in the plant will focus on the modernisation of the existing plant and equipment. The new capacity is expected to commission by the end of 2023.

In 2020, the top Indian producers included SAIL, JSW Steel, JSPL and Tata Steel, with steel production output of 15Mt, 17Mt, 10Mt and 17Mt, respectively. In the same year, India produced 100Mt of crude steel, with the top four producers contributing 59% of India’s total production.