Abhyuday Jindal
MD, Jindal Stainless LimitedAbout
Capacity expansion, sustainability, a business-to-consumer model and co-branding—these are some of the key initiatives that Abhyuday Jindal, MD, Jindal Stainless Steel Ltd, has been spearheading over the past one year. Being one of the fastest-growing companies in the commodity space always comes with a need to increase capacity. “In the last one year—since we are looking at securing our raw materials and assets—we invested in a nickel pig iron smelting facility in Indonesia, which was commissioned early last year. Towards the end of the year, we commissioned our melt shop in Indonesia. It enhanced our capacity from 3 MTPA to 4.2 MTPA,” says Jindal. Along with the increase in melting capacity, the firm has also enhanced its rolling capacity. “The commissioning will happen during this fiscal. We took a call to increase our cold-rolling capacity from 2 MTPA to 2.6-2.7 MTAP, and added another HRAP (hot rolled, annealed, and pickled) line with capacity of 1.1 MTPA.” HRAP line is used to refine hot-rolled stainless steel. The company has also launched Jindal Saathi Seal—a co-branding initiative to assure quality for end consumers. “We are covering industrial products end to end…. We started the programme a few years back with pipes and tubes. But with the kind of interest from consumers, we have expanded it to other areas. We are looking at stainless steel sinks, water tanks, bottles, and certain hollow ware products.” The year also brought challenges on the geo-political front. The stainless steel sector consumes a lot of LPG and propane, which were the most hit. “We had to rationalise our production during March and April. Now we are investing in PNG, coal gasification, which will make us less dependent on imports,” says Jindal.
