The ₹20,000-crore Jindal Stainless Group is looking to ramp up the cold-rolling capacity of its Jajpur facility, in Odisha, by nearly 2 lakh tonnes through brownfield expansion. The plant currently produces 4.5 lakh tonnes of cold-rolled stainless steel used in industrial applications.
“We are investing in scaling up the Jajpur capacity by 2 lakh tonnes in phases. The first phase of the project will commence in January 2019 and the second phase will start in June-July 2019,” Vijay Sharma, Senior Vice-President and Head of Sales, Jindal Stainless, told newspersons here on Friday.
The company, which has an installed capacity of 1.6 million tonnes (mt) of flat products a year, is planning an entry into the long segment.
According to Sharma, plans are afoot to set up a unit for manufacturing long stainless steel products at its existing facility at Hisar in Haryana. Long products currently account for around 20 per cent of the nearly 2.4 mt stainless steel market in India.
The company is hopeful of achieving 15-20 per cent growth in revenue this fiscal backed by the capacity ramp-up and strengthening of presence in value-added steel.
Per capita consumption
“The stainless steel market is growing by around 5 per cent globally and, in India, it has been growing at 9-10 per cent. The per capita consumption of stainless steel is around 2 kg per person in India, compared to the global average of 5 kg. So there is a lot of potential,” he said.
Jindal Stainless is expecting 12-13 per cent growth in volumes in the current fiscal driven by rising demand for stainless steel in the automobile, railway, transport, architecture and consumer durables industries. The growth in value terms would be higher due to the improved product mix, Sharma added.