Tata Steel’s Indian, Singaporean and Thai operations have returned to 100pc capacity utilization, according to the company’s CEO and MD, T.V. Narendran in comments made on the All India Management Association (AIMA) LeaderSpeak programme.
While Narendran noted that the company’s overseas assets in the UK (Port Talbot) and Netherlands (IJmuiden) are only operating at 70-80% capacity, he believes “next year will see a strong demand for steel”.
He pointed out that the company had benefitted from a strong recovery in China which enabled Indian steelmakers to ramp-up output and export material while the domestic market slowly recovered after its own lockdown.
Tata Steel has responded to the deteriorating geopolitical relations between India and China by starting the process of identifying alternative sources of consumables and capital equipment.
However, the shift in supply chain cannot be overnight, as it takes one to two years to run trials and scale up sourcing from new vendors – even if they must pay 20-30pc extra, said Narendran.