November 26, 2001
‘18’
STEEL MINISTER URGES INDUCTION FURNACE UNITS TO STRESS ON QUALITY AND COST EFFECTIVENESS
Induction Furnace Steel Plants should have to adopt innovative measures to reduce electric power consumption and cost of other major inputs. They should draw their own strategies to produce quality steel to face the cut-throat competition inside the country and abroad, said today the Minister for Steel, Shri Braja Kishore Tripathy while inaugurating the 16th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the All India Induction Furnace Association. He was happy to know that some of the induction furnace based steel plants have installed secondary refining facilities and continuous casting machines and wished that more units would adopt these production routes to improve quality and production. Shri Tripathy presented the annual awards to the best performing units and persons.
The Minister urged the association to promote more research and development activities and make all out efforts for optimum use of available resources. He stressed on improved financial management, control of pollution and utilization of solid wastes. He assured all kinds of Government support to the secondary sector and hoped that Association should strive hard to make the Indian Steel sector vibrant.
The Development Commissioner for Iron & Steel Shri R.K.Prasannan released the Souvenir and said that knowledge based productions have now taken over the manufacturing industries. He called upon the Induction Furnace Units to adopt new technologies to develop capacity to innovate and live upto new realities.
The association President Shri Jitendra Singh and other members urged the Government to invest more in the infrastructure sector which will help better the steel industry as a whole and secondary steel segment in particular. They argued to raise the customs duty on import of coking coal to 15 per cent to maintain a parity between primary and secondary steel sector. They appealed to expedite the national steel policy and to set up an apex body for iron & steel policies and programmes in the Ministry with members from primary and secondary steel producers and leading consumers.