Increasing productivity of employees to be thrust area, says CEO cum MD
Jamshedpur: Entering the new financial Year (FY) 2018-19, Tata Steel global CEO and managing director T V Narendran on Sunday said the steel industry is doing well globally and that the market is also stable in India.
“Indian economy has recovered from the impacts of demonetisation and GST. The consumption of steel has started growing. We are looking forward to a good year ahead,” said Narendran while sharing the company’s annual performance at a press meet held at the Centre for Excellence here this evening.
Narendran said the steel major had achieved the highest-ever annual sales of 12.13 million tonnes in FY 18 and registered a growth of 11 per cent against a market growth of 5 per cent. Narendran went on to say that they also achieved the best ever annual sales in automotive sector and registered a growth of 21 per cent in FY18 against an industry growth of 14 per cent.
Moreover, he said that the blast furnaces achieved the best ever hot metal production in FY18 of 10.95 million tonnes (previous best was 10.83 million tonnes in FY 17). He said that in the new fiscal year 2018-19 they would continue to increase efficiency of the blast furnaces and sinter plants at the Jamshedpur plant so as to augment the production from the present level of 10 MTPA to 11 MTPA.
“We will also focus on the second phase of Kalinganagar steel plant in Odisha which is a four year project with 5 million tonne per annum capacity,” he said.
Referring to a query, Narendran said that Tata Steel has already won the won the bid to acquire debt-laden Bhushan Steel and that it has accepted the Letter of Intent (LoI). He said they are waiting for the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) clearance for the takeover of the company.
Addressing queries, the managing director said that the company is focused on increasing productivity this financial year. The company will continue to take productivity to new levels.
�Over the years employee productivity has increased from 400 to 500 tonnes of crude steel to 740 tonnes of crude steel per full time employee (FTE), we want to continue improving with better performance,� noted Narendran.