Catapulting Indian stainless steel sector’ green growth
November 18, 2022
At the very top of the green-growth pyramid for India’s metal sector, lies stainless steel. Stainless steel manufacturing is one industry that majorly contributes towards sustaining green production. The metal is widely used across an array of key sectors, including construction, infrastructure, railway, automotive, transportation, processing sector.
Owing to its corrosion resistance, high strength, aesthetic properties, low lifecycle cost, circularity and low maintenance requirement, stainless steel stands out from carbon steel in a unique way. These features, in addition to widespread adoption across a variety of end uses, are expected to fuel India’s economic expansion.
As one of leading yet largest stainless steel company in India, we strongly believe that sustainability goes beyond conservation. Having committed to no more investment in thermal energy earlier this year, we have now initiated Project Samanvay along with Ernst & Young (EY) LLP as our partners to achieve our broad Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals, forecast our Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, and establish carbon neutrality targets in line with Science Based Target initiative (SBTi).
The focused initiatives include deploying energy-efficient measures, process reconfiguration, adopting and investing in circular economy principles, improving material efficiency, fleet decarbonization, investing in low-carbon emission technologies for stainless steel production etc. Additional steps include air emission compliance within strict norms prescribed by PCBs, waste heat recovery to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, maximising utilization of renewable energy, reduction in specific energy consumption surpassing PAT targets set by government, advanced digital process controls for ensuring highest product quality with minimal wastage and energy efficient production, and raw material and finished goods movement by rail freight to avoid emissions associated in road transport.
Currently, we have a stainless steel melting capacity of 1.9 million metric tonnes (MMT) at our Hisar and Jajpur manufacturing facilities. We have planned a capacity expansion at our Jajpur facility by FY23 that will take the total melting capacity to 2.9 MMT.
During FY2021-22, we reduced our carbon emissions by 3,100 metric tonnes and initiated a switch from a thermal energy-intensive manufacturing setup to renewable energy alternatives such as solar & wind power, Green Hydrogen, adding electric vehicle fleets, upgrading to energy efficient equipment, and usages of bio-fuels as part of our decarbonization initiatives. With the ongoing efforts in this direction, we aim to catapult our carbon abatement numbers to over 1 lakh metric tonnes.
