In Search Of Lost Glory

Once the undisputed leader, SAIL has been outrun by private sector peers JSW and Tata Steel. But the rejuvenated steelmaker is back in the black and eyeing the top spot.

- Sumant Banerji

BARELY TWO WEEKS after he had taken over as the Chairman of India’s largest state-run steel company, 58-year-old Anil Kumar Chaudhary was staring at a major crisis. On October 9, 2018, an explosion at the Bhilai plant, the largest production unit of Steel Authority of India (SAIL), killed 14 workers. The blast occurred in a gas pipeline connected to the coke oven section of the plant during a maintenance job. It was not a one-off incident, though. On May 24, there was a minor fire at the Bhilai plant, though no one was injured. In June 2014, six people, including two deputy general managers, had died in that factory due to gas leakage. In a career spanning over three decades in the public sector company, Chaudhary’s tenure at the top started on a troubled note.

“It was really unfortunate... and I had to face it soon after I took charge. But we have become more careful now. We are doing whatever lies within our realm so that not even a single fatality happens at SAIL in the future. All our plants have been given strict instructions that no production will happen at the cost of safety,” he says.

Will Tailwinds Help?

If the Bhilai incident was baptism by fire, the new chairman has seen a lot of tailwinds as well. For instance, in spite of the tepidness around last year’s festive season that impacted consumer-centric sectors, domestic demand for steel was on the rise, pushing prices up considerably. During April-January 2018/19, India’s consumption of total finished steel stood at 79.98 million tonne (MT), a 7.8 per cent increase over the year-ago period, according to provisional data released by the Joint Plant Committee. The dark days of big imports (of cheap steel) and commodity dumping by China are no longer plaguing the industry. Better still, SAIL’s financial health seems to be on the mend.