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IRON & STEEL REVIEW

September 2009

Indian refractory manufacturers to focus on technology based cost-effective solutions

Sinter Plant 1 Completes 50 years of its journey at Tata Steel
Tata Steel today celebrated the Golden Jubilee of Sinter Plant 1 at its premises in the Jamshedpur Works. The function was graced by Mr B Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel, as the chief guest and Mr Raghunath Pandey, President, Tata Workers’ Union, as the guest of honour. Mr H M Nerurkar, Executive Director, India and South East Asia, was also present on the occasion. With this, Sinter Plant 1 completes 50 years, replete with rich experience, under the tutelage of those who are role-models in the steel industry today.

Timken Forges Marketing Agreement to Offer Industrial Seals in India
The Timken Company announced that Timken India Ltd. has signed a marketing agreement with India’s Spareage Seals Limited, which will allow Timken to offer Spareage’s complete range of oil seals to customers and distributors throughout India.

VIEWPOINT
Indian refractory manufacturers to focus on technology based cost-effective solutions
Indian steel industry is nearing the end of the economic meltdown, which had its impact on the customers, financials and the refractory industry, in particular, as no other economic trend had ever done before. Refractory industry has been a part and parcel of not only the heavy industry, but all the other industries as well which deal with high temperature furnaces. It is not known who made the first refractory brick in the world; although it is almost certain that refractory bricks were used to build furnaces as long as 1500 BC to extract iron and copper from natural minerals.

COMPANY NEWS
Undeterred SAIL eyes at greater returns
Overwhelmed to a point with the industry wide speculations on demand recovery, it came as a matter of dismay to India’s steel behemoth SAIL, as the prevailing market condition this time too being very unkind with sluggish demand, caused the company to suffer a net profit loss of 28% in its first quarter for 2009-10. Company sources while confirming the state of the Q1 results informed that its net profit declined to Rs1326.09 crore compared to Rs1,835 crore in the same period previous year.

SGS Technologies main business line is Combustion Systems
SGS Technologies have worked with number of OEM’s successfully for a number of years. Our ever increasing list of customers is a proof the same. Another remarkable achievement of SGS Tech is that we have supplied burners for various fuels like furnace oil, light diesel oil, HSD, NG, LPG, COG, BFG, PG and hydrogen.

Coral Soff’wares brings in cost effective user friendly ERP solutions for the SME sector
Coral Soff’wares Ltd. was incorporated in Kolkata on 1988. It is in business solutions software development, providing solutions to over 10,000 national and MNC brands spanning a range of verticals – FMCG, healthcare, engineering, electronics and information technology. Commencing its journey as Coral Consultants Pte. Ltd., the company was renamed as Coral Soff’wares Pte. Ltd. in 1996. Coral Soff’wares attained the public ltd. status in the year 2000. The founder CEO, PC Kankaria is a homegrown entrepreneur. Today Coral Soff’wares ranks as one of the frontrunners in the business of easy software solutions.

ElectroMech: technology for unique & reliable solution to hoisting needs
ElectroMech is the largest manufacturer of industrial cranes in the country in terms of volume. The company designed and installed numerous systems to handle loads up to 25,000 kg per cycle, elevating the laden bucket to lifts up to 135 m and several systems are operational across different corners of the country.

FOCUS
SAIL moving towards advanced business process automation
With its flagship unit, Bhilai Steel Plant successfully implementing and deploying Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in Finance & Costing, Sales & Distribution, Materials Management, production planning, quality management and Plant Maintenance areas of operation, Steel Authority of India Ltd has taken a bold step towards implementing advanced business process automation systems in its core business areas.

Steel makers on a balancing act in a slow market
At the moment the entire phase of the global economy in the view of eminent economists is taking a new turn with predictions over greener shoots sprouting, what they say to be far more serious, than in the past sometime, when the ugly recession played havoc and the demand curve stooped to negative zone. Yes, they say that with the economy showing a frequent signs of improvement in demand in some quarters, right now the period could best be termed as a shaping period where they expect the economy to get moulded with massive development.

Tata Steel Group reports consolidated results for the quarter ended June, 2009
Highlights for the quarter:
Sales volume of Indian operations was higher by 22% during Q1 FY’10 over Q1FY’09. Total steel deliveries for the Group for the quarter dropped 37% to 5.443 million tonnes from 8.603 million tonnes in Q1 FY’09 mainly due to fall in volume in Tata Steel Europe (TSE) affected by the demand contraction especially in Europe on account of the global economic downturn.

India’s metal transportation industry set to boom
Transportable metal production volume is set to surge from 50 MT in 2008 to 79 MT in 2014, according to an analysis by Frost & Sullivan.
The metal transportation market in India is primarily driven by the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. With both these witnessing impressive growth in the past few years, the consumption of metals, and thereby, revenues for the transportation of metals, have risen steadily. The prospects for the market will get brighter over the next five years, buoyed by several government initiatives in the infrastructure sector, and an expected early revival in the manufacturing sector.

COVER STORY
India, a mineral rich country, is a strategic foot step with an eye to SE Asia
Following a long standing relationship between Hari Machines and allmineral GmbH, why did you think that going by a separate entity like allmineral | Asia would be a better idea to follow at this juncture?
Hari Machines will stay with us as a strategic partner, i.e. all local manufacturing and assembly work is done by Hari Machines. allmineral | Asia took over the marketing, project management and after sales service. This is our response to the fast growing Indian market for mineral beneficiation, a growth we didn´t expect when we started here in 2005. Because of it´s actual nature and volume a different approach where required, last but not least improving our presence as the technology provider and making the knowhow transfer more efficient.

allmineral – a global player for beneficiation technology
Technologically superior processes are paving the way for the future – and allmineral is one of the leading global player to provide complete mineral beneficiation solution from concept to commissioning. Along with its branches in Poland, South Africa, the USA and most recently in India, the German-based group has made a name for itself by specializing in the processing and separation of a wide variety of raw materials according to type. In cooperation with select, dependable associates, allmineral is represented on-site in all of the important global raw material markets. With the help of allmineral’s innovative technological equipment, and the sophisticated processes on which it is based, it is possible for mined raw and recycleable materials to be processed efficiently into refined, high-quality end products, in order to meet the market’s increasing demands in an economical and environmentally friendly way.

SPECIAL FEATURE
Performance of Public & Private Sector Steel Industry in FY’09
The Indian steel industry has almost survived the shock of global steel slowdown that started around October, 2008. According to World Steel Association, India was the fifth highest producer of crude steel in the world in 2008. Amongst the ten top global steel producing countries, India was one of the three countries that posted positive growth of 3.7 per cent in crude steel production in 2008. The other two countries to record positive growths in production during the year were South Korea-3.8 per cent and China 2.6 per cent.

Indian steel industry : challenges ahead
In the month of October 2003, Goldman Sachs released its much acclaimed Global Economic Paper called ‘Dreaming with BRICs : The Path to 2050’. Going by the analysis & projections of this report, the size of the Indian Economy in 2050 will be $27.8 Trillion and it will be the 3rd largest economy after China and the US.

FACE TO FACE
“We are aggressively focusing on cutting down cost; so that we are able to retain our margins in the current market scenario”
One clear shift now in the market dynamics post recession is that there is enhanced focus on cost minimization at all levels. While our customers are looking for better value offerings from us as a supplier, our approach to tackle the situation is to continue to enhance the proportion of value added products in our product-mix, said Shoeb Ahmed, Director – Commercial, SAIL in a recent interview. Here are the excerpts…

COMPANY PROFILE
Complete technical know-how to design, manufacture & install rolling mill plants as per customers’ needs & specifications
SMT Machines (India) Limited, being An ISO–9001:2000 Certified Company, An ISO-14001 Company, Government of India Recognized Export House and D & B Ranked SE2A, is a well-organized & well-equipped Mechanical, Hydraulic as well as Pneumatic Engineering Company situated on the G.T. Road, Near Industrial Focal Point, Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab (India), the place having maximum number of steel producing mills in Asia. SMT, fundamentally, caters to the needs of the steel rolling mill Industry with services ranging from:
• Design & Development
• Manufacturing

STEEL TECHNOLOGY
An overview on Bismuth use in free machining steels
Machinability is a term that describes the difficulties occurring during cutting a work piece and is evaluated on the basis of cutting process forces, surface quality, chip formation & tool life primarily coupled with other associated factors such as friction coefficient, cutting temperatures, layer formation, rim properties and built up edge formation. It plays a pivotal role in the mass production of components as around 60% of the total manufacturing costs originate from the cutting processes. This calls for work piece materials that confer low tool wear at longer cutting times, short breakable chips for undisturbed chip removal, satisfactory surface quality during machining, capability to allow low cutting forces as well as low temperatures for application of sensitive cutting tools & machines. The desired material properties with regard to machining processes are obtained in steels that are alloyed with sulfur, lead and further by adding elements like phosphorus, selenium, tellurium, antimony, calcium, bismuth or tin (ref.1,2,3,4,5). These steels are termed as Free Cutting or Free Machining steels and finds application in the production of small components for manufacture of screws, nuts & several kinds of fittings.

3-roll Reducing & Sizing Block [RSB] to increase Quality and Productivity
The first 3-roll block for long product rolling was introduced in 1954 based on the 3-roll stands developed for tube stretch reducing mills. After this application for wire rod rolling was successfully implemented the requirement for adequate bar sizing became important for some manufacturers in the early 70´s. Intensive tests lead to the decision to also adopt 3-roll passes for that purpose instead of 2-high stands. The first industrial use of the so-called Precision Sizing Block (PSB) was made in 1979 at the former KRUPP SÜDWESTFALEN AG, SIEGEN-GEISWEID, Germany [1].

STEEL INTERNATIONAL
Major caster modernization completed in record time at Acroni, Slovenia
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies completely modernized an over 20-year-old, single-strand slab caster at the steel works of the Slovenian producer Acroni, d.o.o. The machine head and strand-guiding system were replaced and outfitted with the latest technological packages, systems and equipment to enable wider slabs be cast with a significant improvement in quality. All onsite construction activities were completed in the Spring of 2009 within a tight timeframe of only 38 days. Plant start-up proceeded smoothly and all casting equipment and systems functioned as designed beginning with the first heat. Following fulfillment of the guaranteed performance figures for various steel grades, the Final Acceptance Certificate was received within 2 months after the plant startup.

STEEL & INFRASTRUCTURE
Structuring Growth
It is said that the progress made by the construction industry of any country is the index of its industrial development. India is a good example of this axiom. Consider this – India’s GDP (gross domestic product) grew by an average 9% in the last three years; our domestic construction industry grew at a comp8nded annual growth rate of 16.5% during the last seven years, accounting for almost 7.2% of GDP! With construction constituting nearly 42% of the total investment in infrastructure, the industry witnessed a strong growth fuelled by huge investments in power projects, housing, airports, ports, roads, etc. Even in 2008-09, despite the generally debilitating impact of the global economic recession, construction activity rate of over 9%.

REFRACTORY
Latest developments in refractory monolithics
Various trends in refractory monolithics are discussed, giving a focus especially on monolithic applications in the steel ladle lining. The steel ladle is one of the highest refractory consumption areas in steel making and it constantly requires improvements of the refractory lining concepts due to increasingly demanding process conditions.

FERRO ALLOY/span>
Switching from ferro alloys industry to power
Due to sharp decline demand of almost all ferro alloys from the market and also sluggish market of primary and secondary steel producers in the domestic as well as in the export market.
And the other side the falling prices of ferro alloys are pulling down further slides by 45 % -50% compare against last corresponding year in the same period.

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