Tata Steel to invest ₹12k cr in FY23: CEO
NEW DELHI: Tata Steel has planned capital expenditure (capex) of ₹12,000 crore on its India and Europe operations during the current financial year, the company’s chief executive officer T V Narendran said.
The domestic steel major plans to invest ₹8,500 crore in India and ₹3,500 crore on the company’s operations in Europe, Narendran, who is also the managing director (MD) of Tata Steel, told PTI in an interview.
On Tata Steel’s capex plans for FY23, he said: “We have planned for about ₹12,000 crore of capex for the year of which about ₹8,500 crore will be spent in India and the balance in Europe.” In India, the focus will be on the Kalinganagar project expansion and mining activity, and in Europe, it will be focussed on sustenance, product mix enrichment and environment-related capex, Narendran said.
The company is in process of expanding capacity of its plant in Kalinganagar, Odisha to 8 MT from 3 MT.
In addition to this, Tata Steel will be spending about ₹12,000 crore on inorganic growth in India in the NINL acquisition, he said.
Tata Steel through its whollyowned subsidiary Tata Steel Long Products Limited (TSLP), completed the acquisition of Odisha- based one Million Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) steel mill NINL for a consideration amount of ₹12,000 crore.
Elaborating on the European business, he said it has been divided into the Dutch business and the British business.
“This allows us to run Tata Steel as one integrated company with five major sites, three in India and two in Europe. This brings greater focus on each of our operating sites. The European sites have been tasked with becoming self-sufficient,” he said.
On Tata Steel’s interest in acquiring state-owned Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), he said the company did not have a dedicated large site to produce long products in its portfolio. However, the NINL acquisition has plugged this gap.
On the duty-related measures taken by the government, Narendran said “I fully understand and appreciate the compulsions of the government in taking actions that they did to control inflation. However, in the medium to long- term, we should actively be positioning India as one of the best places to produce steel in the world.” Narendran, who is also part of the executive committee of the apex steel body World Steel Association said the Russia-Ukraine conflict has impacted the global geopolitical order and the global economic order and hence the steel industry in multiple ways.
The pandemic had already encouraged companies to look not just at cost efficiencies in supply chains but also to build resilience in supply chains.
Tata Steel is among the top three steel producing companies in India, producing close to 20 million tonnes .