by Sawon Banerjee | Sep 7, 2021 | News
The Gujarat government informed that the world’s leading steel and mining conglomerate ArcelorMittal would invest ₹1,00,000 crore in different projects in the states, including its steel plant at Hazira near Surat.
Mittal expressed his commitment to invest ₹50,000 crore for the expansion of Hazira-based steel plant. Notably, ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India had taken over the steel plant from Essar in 2019.
Mittal is also willing to invest another ₹50,000 crore in solar energy, wind energy and hydrogen gas production in Gujarat. In all, the group would invest ₹1,00,000 core in the near future in Gujarat. Chief Minister Rupani welcomed the decision and assured to provide all necessary help, the statement said.
by Sawon Banerjee | Sep 7, 2021 | News
Larsen & Toubro crossed a new milestone with the roll out of its 500th L&T 491 Mini Compactor from L&T Construction Equipment Limited’s Doddaballapura campus, near Bengaluru. At an event held in the factory recently, the new machine was handed over to Mr. T. S. Amarnath of Mahima Infrastructures by Mr. Arvind K. Garg, Executive Vice-President-CMB, Larsen & Toubro. Mr. Vivek Hajela, VP-CEB, Mr. H. Shridhara Hande, CE, LTCEL, Mr. Jaikumar Kamath, Head-Road Machinery Business, L&T-CMB, along with senior executives participated in the event.
Mahima Infrastructures is a Bengaluru based well established firm presently engaged in doing roads and civil works for renowned Real Estate Developers of Bangalore as well as for Bangalore Smart City Limited and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited.
Mahima is a large fleet owner of L&T Compactors, with more than 10 machines in his fleet. This machine has a drum width of 1.2 m and weighs 3400 kg. These machines are used for apartment basements, internal roads of townships, parking lot, footpaths, compaction around pillars for elevated metro rail, National Highway shoulder compaction and various jobs in the Smart City Project.
L&T Compactors have made fast inroads in the road segment in the Indian market and have been deployed for construction of roads, highways and toll ways. Besides the L&T 491 Mini Tandem Compactor, L&T offers L&T 1190 Soil Compactor and L&T 990 Tandem Compactor and L&T 2490 Pneumatic Tyred Rollers for the road construction. With the Government of India’s policy on expanding road network, the compactor market is in an upbeat mood and poised for a big growth in the near future.
For further information,
visit: www.lntecc.com
by Sawon Banerjee | Sep 7, 2021 | News
The sagging fortunes of long steel product manufacturers are set to revive strongly in coming quarters, following years of anaemic growth, driven by increased construction activity. In particular, medium and small long-steel product manufacturers who unlike their larger peers have suffered more during recent years will benefit now from this strong demand uptick.
On this, Mr. Jayanta Roy, Sr. VP and Group Head says, “Over the past six years, given the multitude of policy and social/health disruptions, long steel demand grew at an anaemic 6-year CAGR (FY2016-2021) of 1.4%. So far, available demand has been largely absorbed by the larger long steel manufacturers leading to a significantly divergent capacity utilisation trends between them and smaller long-steel manufacturers. We expect this to correct to an extent in the coming months as demand increases, pulling up capacity utilisation rates of small and medium sized manufactures, since larger players have been operating at healthy rates anyway.”
Unlike past cycles, when steel prices and coking coal prices moved in tandem, international trade disturbances decoupled prices of these two commodities since the second half of FY2021. Consequently, the steep steel price rally and benign coking coal prices led to a sharp increase in contribution margins of larger players to all-time highs in FY2021 and Q1 FY2022, improving their credit profiles significantly. On the other hand, with prices of sponge iron, scrap and non-coking coal, which are typically the raw materials used by small and medium players increasing significantly over the same period, margins of smaller players were impacted.
During the past few weeks, iron ore prices have been correcting amid a decline in international prices and better availability in the domestic market. While large integrated steel manufacturers’ margins will continue to remain insulated from iron ore price movement to the extent of their captive iron ore availability, the impact of higher coking coal prices will show up in the margins in H2 FY2022. ICRA expects the recent easing of iron ore prices in the country and sharp increase in coking coal prices, besides an improvement in capacity utilisation of smaller players, to lead to a narrowing of the margin gap between these two segments going forward.
Adds Ms. Pavethra Ponniah, Sr. VP and Co-Group Head, ICRA, “The decoupling of price trends between steel and coking coal over the past several quarters has begun to reverse after May 21. This will impact margins of large steel manufactures in H2 FY2022. At the same time, increase in capacity utilisation and easing iron ore supply/prices in the domestic markets will benefit smaller players.”
For further information,
visit: www.icra.in
by Sawon Banerjee | Sep 7, 2021 | News
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has renewed a pledge to spend 100 trillion rupee (US$1.3 trillion) on the country’s infrastructure. Modi made his India’s 75th Independence Day speech in New Delhi with `100-trillion Pradhan Mantri Gatishakti Bharat Master Plan for integrated infrastructure growth.
Modi said that the investment would boost the productivity of industries and the economy and create job opportunities for, “hundreds of thousands” of people. He added that it would help make, “local manufacturers globally competitive,” and “Reduce the travel time for the common man and the productivity of our industry will also increase.”
The Indian government has been investing heavily in infrastructure in recent years – in July a new report, Construction in India, by India Infrastructure Research, estimated a pipeline of around US$1.5 trillion would be spent by 2024 on infrastructure. Over 70% of this was for four infrastructure sectors: energy (24%), roads (19%), urban infrastructure (16%) and railways (13%).
India’s economy contracted by 7.3% in its last fiscal year as the country suffered badly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Infrastructure investment is seen as a way of stimulating the economy.
In his speech Modi also pledged to make India energy independent by 2047as `12 trillion are spent on energy imports every year The plan is aimed at easier interconnectivity between road, rail, air and waterways to reduce travel time and improve industrial productivity.
by Sawon Banerjee | Sep 7, 2021 | News
GMR Group, operating the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Hyderabad, will invest more than ₹500 crore by 2024 in a metro rail link project for connectivity across the city. The ₹5,000 crore project has been proposed by the Telangana government and is expected to span 31 kilometers in total.
According to a consultation paper proposed by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, the Group will invest ₹519.52 crore.”The envisaged project cost of metro line would be around ₹5000 crore of which HIAL’s contribution would be in the range of ₹500 Crores (10 per cent of the project cost) which is equivalent to the estimated cost of metro connectivity within the airport precinct,” the paper said.
The metro rail link project will be extended to the RGIA to create accessibility for people living in different areas of Hyderabad. Telangana government has already formed a Special Purpose Vehicle- Hyderabad Airport Metro Limited (HAML) to develop, construct, operate and manage the metro.
