Page 155 - Steel Tech India eMagazine Volume April 2022

VOL. 16 • NO. 3 • April 2022

With this brief he gave the floor to panellists starting with Mr. BP Sarkar who has vast experience in this field
while at tata Steel and as ditor of Steel tech to give his views on the future and what is the thought process
in choosing this topic of the seminar. Mr. Sarkar opined that sub-merged arc furnaces, either closed or open, are
used in making ferroalloys. the cost of production mainly depends on raw materials and energy. Reportedly 17/19
nuclear plants are going to be installed in India. We have plenty of coal and coal mines are being privatised and
there is a need for the industry to consolidate and be big enough to spend money whether it is for captive power
plants with coal for reducing power cost and ccS if possible and any other environment friendly technology to be
looked into.

Dr. B. Bhoi, Mr. Aurindam Dey & Mr. B. P. Sarkar (sitting left to right respectively) during panel discussion

chrome is a scare resource and many countries do not have this, We are fortunate to have some and we need
to extract them even if we need to go for underground mining. With regard to manganese ore, India still has to
import but we have low grade manganese ore but they need beneficiation to increase its Mn content which is
also covered by Dr. Bhoi during his presentation. thirdly, with regards to coking coal, the prices have gone up
significantly and we hope prices to come down to a normal level soon. We do not have low ash coal in our country
and we need to import them to feed to the ferroalloy industry. With regard to energy Mr. Sarkar opined that we have
to see that we get at INR 5 per unit max. in our country otherwise it may be uneconomical as per the current status.
We have to have power plants as the renewable energy just can’t cater to the current need as of now. Ferroalloy
companies should have power plants like we have them at IMFA. Future is bright for the ferroalloy industry like
steel. With regard to ferrotitanium, we have plenty of titanium in our coastal areas from Odisha to Kerala and in
the same sub-merged arc furnace we can make ferrotitanium economically if we get power at below INR 5 per
unit. there is a good demand of it in paint and other industry. All in all there is a good prospect for the ferroalloys
industry and we need a good capex and consolidation.
then Mr Aurindam Dey mentioned though he is not a person from this industry but from the deliberations which
were made since morning including keynote address of Dr. Kundu his take away is one in terms of the coke
consumption (Ac vs Dc furnaces) and the second one is about manganese ore which can be put into different
use and the third one is the environmental impact. Ferroalloy industry has to confirm to the norms of emission.
he also covered the consolidation being taking places in our country citing the example of tata Steel taking over
RohitFerrotech and can set the norm for the industry. The fourth point is of making Nickel from COB which was
covered by Dr. Bhoi. During the course of panel discussion on a question on IMR future plans, he mentioned

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