Scrap Processors
January 5, 2024
India scraps Salem sale
New Delhi has abandoned plans to privatise the Salem Steel Plant in Tamil Nadu state because of a lack of investor interest.
“Multiple EoI [expressions of interest] had been received and bidders were shortlisted,” the Press Trust of India news agency reported the department of investment and public asset management as saying. “However, due to the lack of interest of shortlisted bidders to proceed further with the transaction, the government of India … has decided to annul the current EoI thereby terminating the present transaction.”
It is the last of three units of state-owned steel maker SAIL to have suffered that fate. Plans to dispose of the Alloys Steel Plant in Durgapur, West Bengal, were ended in 2019 and three years later the same thing happened to Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Plant at Bhadravati, Karnataka.
Salem produces cold rolled stainless steel, hot rolled carbon and stainless steel products, and micro-alloyed carbon steel. The Alloys Steel Plant focuses on alloyed squares and rounds, wear resistant plates, special quality slabs and stainless steel slabs, among other products, while Visvesvaraya’s forte is rolled and forged alloy and special steel products.
