India’s Hot Rolled Ferrous Metal Industry

Hot roll steel industry in India is vibrant, technological advanced and complicated model of an industrial organization, numerous factors continues to influence the market conditions. Despite the fact, that government has tried to interfere in the market to control rate of hot roll steel, the dynamics of the industry has yet kept the government a part from controlling the complete mechanics of the industry.

The major players such as Tata Steels and SAIL have integrated structures and operations, enabling them to play with the upstream and downstream of hot roll products, hence they vary numerous factors for their own objectives.

The industry is however challenging for the small firms for their existence and sustainability since the big players are gobbling up the big portion and shrinking the space for the small firms and restricting new comers in the industry. Although there is tough environment for small firms, but since the local market implicates demand, there is still a vacuum left for small and new firms to grow and occupy some space in the market.

It is vital to note that the five main steel HR coils producers persisted to uphold immense power over the HR coils market even in 2010-11. If the market is analyzed by the production of HR coils and sheets, out of a total production of 7.923 million tones (not including the production of SAIL and Tata Steel), only 1.052 million tons were formed by companies except the big three. If only wide HR coils are considered i.e. above 900mm width, just about the whole production i.e. 98 percent in the country came from the big five only.

Mehta, Pradeep. Towards a Functional Competition Policy for India. Dehli: Academic Foundation, 2006.