Present Status of Stainless Steel Industry in India & it’s Future Prospects

Abstract

Indian Stainless Steel Development Association (ISSDA) was formed in 1989 with the explicit objective of diversifying and expanding the domestic market of stainless steel. At that time, more than 90% of stainless used in the country was kitchenware but over the last two decades, stainless steel has undergone tremendous changes in perception and its increasingly growing end use application in areas such as architecture building & construction, automotive transport, process and engineering. The world production of stainless steel in 2012 is estimated at 35.4 million tonne. Asia has strongly emerged as both the worlds largest stainless steel producer and user. Among countries, China dominates the world production of stainless steel accounting for almost 45% share. However, India has outpaced global growth rates consistently over last 10 years with its stainless steel melt production in 2012 reaching almost 3 million tonnes to propel the country as 4th largest producer after China, Europe and Japan. The potential growth of stainless steel in India is enormous, considering the fact that the per capita consumption at 1.9kg is still much lower than world average of almost 4.85kg. The per capita consumption of stainless steel has strong co-relation with per capita GDP and India is expected to more than double its per capita income over next 10 years. In addition increased urbanization, high demographic dividends and governments manufacturing policy seeking to enhance the share of manufacturing in GDP to 25% within a decade augurs well for the future growth of the stainless steel in India. This paper focuses on the growth story of Indian Stainless Steel industry and its market sector vis-à-vis world and further explores on the strategy to increase the consumption domestically considering the fact that world is going through recession cycles resulting in excessive capacity especially China posing a major challenge to Indian Stainless industry. Keywords: Stainless Steel, Indian Industry, Growth Prospects, Present Status