How steel sector is coping with corona: Industry views

Steel Insights

To stop the pandemic on its vicious path, the nation has been put under extended lockdown. While steel industry has been barely able to function under such a constraints, absence of workers or logistical support are creating roadblock. In this issue we continue to seek important insights from the key players in this sector on how they are bravely facing up to the challenge.

How do you see the current situation evolving and impacting the industry as a whole?

During this pressing time when the whole world in under an economic shock and all industries are facing equally analogous issues, steel industry is no exception. The industry is facing turmoil in terms of raw materials availability, supply disruptions and demand fluctuations. There has been a drastic decline in the consumption pattern during this pandemic and every industry has faced the wrath of it.

In this testing time, Calderys stands strong with its customers providing them with the right set of refractory solutions to meet the production bottlenecks and uncertain demand. We believe that the government is playing a vital role to contain this pandemic and bring back normalcy in operations to improve the consumption cycle and boost the economy.

What could be your business continuity plans?

We have our ears on the ground listening to all problems, pain areas and requirement our customers’ post lockdown and have already chalked out a contingency plan to help them return to normalcy in their production operations. The Lockdown has helped us buy some time from our busy schedule to ponder on improvement programs, technological up-gradation and also increased our appetite to take risks by accepting innovative home-grown solutions for age-old traditional problems.

We have launched digital initiatives like the webinar and remote inspection in order to promote contactless processes and we are still able to provide the best in class products & services to our customers. We have recently conducted an ‘Ask the Experts! - Live Panel Discussion’ with the industry experts for iron and steel makers on ‘Impact of Covid on Blast Furnace Operations and Do’s & Don’t of refractory maintenance’ which was very well received by our customers.

How you are coping with demand slowdown and when to expect demand pickup?

Flu where most of the developed nations are facing a severe health and economic crisis. The clock is ticking and the need of the hour is to keep our people safe and we should take all possible measures to bring the situation back to normalcy.

So far, our governing administrations have been very proactive in taking all possible measures to restrict the spread of this pandemic in our country. We are optimistic that in the coming months and weeks we would be able to contain this threat. We expect the demand to start picking up gradually and the economy settles down back to its original pristine.

Since last 45 day we are coping with negligible sales but, our passionate teams are holding the fort strong and are geared up to cater to all requirements of our customers. We are working on building our internal capability by improving our processes and optimizing our overheads.

We believe that with accurate indigenous refractory solutions, we can reduce import dependency and provide ‘Best of the Worlds’ solutions through ‘Make in India’ to our customers. We are keeping a close watch on customer refractory requirements to address the critical areas in the Iron and Steel industry.