Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel today said it may have to shut down its 10 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) Vijayanagar plant in Karnataka due to a continuous shortage of iron ore.
"There is a slight deferral for some time (on the commencement of construction work) till the economic situation improves," JSW Steel Vice-Chairman and MD Sajjan Jindal said. Faced with a liquidity crunch, JSW Steel had earlier said it was cutting its proposed investment by nearly one-third to about Rs 4,000 crore for the first phase of the Rs 35,000 crore mega steel project in West Bengal.
JSW Steel plans to abandon its coal mining project in Mozambique because of higher than expected ash content in the coking coal.
Earlier this month, the high court asked Sesa Goa and JSW Steel to re-bid.
At a time when instability in the US leveraged buyout (LBO) market is making world equities markets jittery, JSW Steel is planning a leveraged buyout of a North American steel company.
Lines up investments in steel, power sectors to profit from booming demand.
The Indian Steel Alliance, the high-profile lobby group for big producers representing approximetly half of India's steel production, is being dissolved, seven years after it was set up to promote steel usage in the country. On Sunday, state-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd had pulled out of ISA in a bid to distance itself from the recent price-rise controversy and had said the alliance had outlived its utility.
The steel industry has proposed a slew of measures that will bring down prices by 12-15 per cent with immediate effect.
Large steel producers had reduced prices up to Rs 4,000 per tonne on request of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on May 7. They had also agreed to hold the price line for the next three months. The three-month price moratorium expires in August.
The festive season will mean business for the steel industry as it is the time when automotive and consumer appliance companies bump up demand to prepare for higher sales, experts have said. Ranjan Dhar, chief marketing officer at ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India (AM/NS India), said that bookings by auto and consumer appliance industries are 20 per cent higher ahead of the festive season compared to last year. "While this could be for a couple of months, it could normalise later at approximately 10 per cent," he said.
Though the ruling Left Front in West Bengal recorded its worst performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls, industrialists appear to be unperturbed by the changing political wind in the state and believe industrialisation will continue.
'It might not have a direct impact on the domestic steel industry but will improve India's position in the global market.'
Sajjan Jindal, vice-chairman and managing director of JSW Steel and one of West Bengal's most valued investors, said that he would have compensated unwilling farmers with double the land 800 acres next door in return for land for the Tata Motors factory at Singur.
Companies attribute declining sales to the lack of demand from the automobile, real estate and consumer durables sectors, which are facing rising inventory levels that have choked cash flows.
Essar group, Bhushan Steel and JSW group likely to be impacted by changes
There is a dearth of talent in the Indian banking industry. A testimony to this is the two new CEOs in the private sector -- Sandeep Bakhshi in ICICI Bank Ltd and Amitabh Chaudhry in AXIS Bank Ltd -- have come from the insurance sector, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Then chief minister Jyoti Basu once told an industrialist that capitalists were class enemies and he should expect no sympathy.
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