It now appears to be turn of the stainless steelmakers to seek duty relief to escape being swamped by cheaper imports from China, Korea and Taiwan.

 

There has been an upsurge in imports of stainless steel flat products over the years from about 55,000 tonnes in 2006-07 to 1.85 lakh tonnes in 2007-08 and the Indian Stainless Steel Development Association expects it to go up further to over 2 lakh tonnes this fiscal. The total industry production this year is expected to touch 1.8 million tonnes.

 

To tide over the crisis, the association has sought scrapping of the five per cent import duty on stainless steel melting scrap and increase in import duty on stainless HR flat rolled products from five to 15 per cent.

 

The association has also called for increased import duty from five to 20 per cent on stainless steel CR flat rolled products.

 

Association President, Mr N.C. Mathur, who is also Director of Jindal Stainless, told Business Line that the industry was at the crossroads. Prices of major raw materials, which had to be imported, such as nickel, chrome and melting scrap had come down drastically.

 

“In April, Nickel was $25,735 a tonne and today it is $11,000, while ferrous melting scrap from $650 per tonne in June had dropped to $218 now,” he said. While the price reduction was welcome, the lead time from order placement to delivery for the import of raw material was 8-10 weeks.

 

Unaware of the inventory load and the prices they were imported, customers were insisting on stainless steelmakers to offer lower prices consistent with the reduced raw material cost, which often lead to order cancellations. Moreover, the depreciating rupee against the dollar had made raw material import more expensive.

 

Nickel and melting scrap have to be imported, while chrome is available in the domestic market. Chrome price too have dropped from about Rs 1 lakh a tonne to Rs 45,000 a tonne.

 

Mr Mathur feared that once the anti-dumping investigation, currently on in Europe, is completed and tightening measures taken, more imports from these countries would find their way to India. –Business Line