Tata Steel supplied 800,000 tonnes to the auto sector last fiscal, a 12 per cent fall from 900,000 tonnes in 2007-08. We expect it to remain the same this year, Mr Peeyush Gupta, Chief of Marketing & Sales, Flat Products, told Business Line.
With a 40 per cent share, the company is the market leader among steel suppliers to the automotive industry. And even while vehicle production grew three per cent in 2008-09 to close at 1.12 crore units, the consumption of steel just did not keep pace.
Sources say that this occurred largely due to the commercial vehicle segment which, as a major steel consumer, had a tough year and fell 24 per cent to close at 4.17 lakh units. It was worse with medium and heavy commercial vehicles which saw a 35 per cent drop to 1.93 lakh units.
About 55 per cent of a vehicles parts are made of steel. We saw a severe reduction during November-December but normalcy was resumed by March-April, said Mr Anand Sen, Vice-President, (TQM and Flat Products), Tata Steel.
The company launched Galvano, a galvanised plain steel with zero spangles used in manufacture of engineering goods, consumer durables and body parts of automobiles. The total domestic need for galvanised steel is 1.9 million tonnes, of which the auto sectors share is around one lakh tonnes, said Mr Sen.
Galvanised steel costs Rs 8,000-Rs 12,000 more (for every tonne) than cold rolled steel and is being increasingly used in bus body building.
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