Bhubaneswar: With an eye on a greater share in railway procurement of alloy, Jindal Stainless Ltd (JSL) is planning to setting up two cold-rolling units at Jajpur in Odisha, with an investment of Rs 250 crore.
The two plants that will start operating within a year have a combined capacity of 200,000 tonnes. These will take the total capacity of the group to 800,000 tonnes. This additional capacity will come handy for Jindal as the railways’ annual procurement is slated to go up to Rs 4,000 crore from Rs 2,500 crores.
Jindal Stainless hopes to maintain a 70 per cent share of the railway procurement, which, it believes, will drive a topline growth of 14-15 per cent.
Senior vice-president sales and distribution (domestic and exports), Vijay Sharma told the Telegraph that the Indian consumption of stainless steel is growing at 9-10 per cent. “With the railway procurement going up and new application opening up in the auto sector, JSL should be able to grow in volume better than the market,” he said.
The railways is going to make only stainless steel coaches from 2020. It will double the 2,500 volume an annum. The supply to wagons will also double, he added.
“In the auto sector, JSL will gain from the conversion to BS-VI as the exhaust pipes require stainless steel. Commercial vehicles will also start using stainless steel pipes,” he added.
Looking forward to an annual capacity of about 50,000 tonnes a year, JSL is also foraying into stainless long-products, constituting about 20 per cent of the total demand, to deepen its portfolio over the next 18 months. It will be implemented at Jindal Stainless (Hisar).
At the moment, Jindal Stainless and Jindal Stainless (Hisar) are awaiting communication from lenders on their response to a corporate debt restructuring package.
