Forging ahead
Pochappan Sasindran, chief operating officer of the Vijayanagar plant of JSW Steel Ltd, tells Jayne Flannery that success comes from adding value to peopleÔÇÖs lives as well as the product.
JSW Group is one of the fastest growing business conglomerates in India. Led by Sajjan Jindal, the organisation has grown from a single steel cold rolling mill in 1982 to a highly diversified enterprise worth $3.7 billion.
Steel, though, remains at the core of the group and JSW Steel Ltd is IndiaÔÇÖs largest private steel company. Pochappan Sasindran is chief operating officer of the Vijayanagar Works, located in the Bellary district of Karnataka. It is one of three steel works that the company operates in India.
Sasindran is quite clear that selling steel as a commodity is not what this company is about. ÔÇ£We donÔÇÖt want to be known as a supplier of steel,ÔÇØ he states. ÔÇ£We see our task as working very closely with our customers to understand their precise needs and the application they require the steel for. Then we will come up with a customised solution of the highest quality. Our customers like what we do and how we do it; they are very loyal and keep coming back to us.
ÔÇ£We concentrate on high-end applications,ÔÇØ he continues. ÔÇ£Slabs for ship building, for example, and coil for the automobile industry. We also do a lot of steel for oil and natural gas applications. Downstream, we have a number of operations to add value and so we sell hot rolled coils, cold rolled coils, galvanised and colour coated steel and special grades for the automotive and white goods industries.ÔÇØ
Production this financial year at Vijayanagar will be about six million tonnes. Next year, Sasindran anticipates that figure will be substantially higher. ÔÇ£Despite the economic crisis, we have not had to cut down our production. Rather, we have looked inward and reduced our production costs to remain extremely competitive. At present, we export to about 400 esteemed customers in more than 100 countries, with the steel we produce going to Europe and the US as well.ÔÇØ
The plant started its integrated operations in 1999, expanding to seven million tonnes in early 2009. It is now acclaimed as one of the most modern, eco-friendly steel plants in the world. Eventually the plant at Vijayanagar will be capable of producing 16 million tonnes a year.
ÔÇ£We wanted state-of-the-art facilities and so we turned to the worldÔÇÖs leading suppliers of technology to the steel world when we were designing the Vijayanagar facility,ÔÇØ explains Sasindran. ÔÇ£For example, Siemens VAI from Austria and the UK provided our Corex and blast furnace technology, while Man Turbo from Switzerland built us the largest 40 megawatt furnace blowers ever made. We also worked with Paul Worth for critical equipment, SMS Siemag for steel making and casting facilities, MHI Japan for the new hot strip mill and Morgan from the US for long product mills. Some of the best technologies we have relate to energy and water consumption, which makes this plant one of the most efficient in the world,ÔÇØ he says.
Sasindran explains that the group takes a profound interest in its impact on the environmentÔÇöthe ISO 14001 environmental management system is in place at each of the plants operated by JSW Steel. ÔÇÿA steel plant in a forestÔÇÖ was the comment left in the visitorsÔÇÖ book by one impressed guest; and the area around Vijayanagar is carefully maintained as closely as possible to its natural pristine state. The site is also regularly benchmarked against the best companies of its type in Korea and Japan.
The site employs some 4,000 people and staff are helped with housing, health and the education of their children. Sasindran is particularly proud of the companyÔÇÖs record for employing women. ÔÇ£Normally you would only find men and boys in a steel works. As an organisation, we are very concerned to promote the employment of women and we have a number of engineers who are women. We have also found that they make excellent crane operators.ÔÇØ
Women are also being trained and placed in other jobs where they are not normally found, such as power-tiller and pump operation, mechanical and electrical maintenance and driving.
Whenever possible, all employees are encouraged to develop their technical competence and follow a career path. In collaboration with the government of Karnataka, JSW has taken the lead in forming the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Steel Technology, an institute that will offer high level training to meet the special needs of the steel industry. The company has also entered into a partnership with IndiaÔÇÖs leading engineering institute, BITS Pilani, which specialises in process engineering.
The JSW Group dedicates approximately 1.5 per cent of profit after tax to a range of social development projects. The group is guided by the belief that the business is dependent on society for its growth and prosperity. Islands of prosperity cannot survive for long in a vast sea of poverty and unfulfilled basic needs, so corporate social responsibility is as important as profitability.
ÔÇ£Our managing director Mr Jindal and his wife Mrs Sangita Jindal both take corporate social responsibility very seriously,ÔÇØ affirms Sasindran. ÔÇ£As a group, we are committed to all our stakeholders and want to do what we can to improve the lives of the people we work with and who live in the areas where we operate,ÔÇØ he says.┬á
A vast programme of activities related to corporate social responsibility is undertaken through a charitable trust, the JSW Foundation, which is chaired by Mrs Sangita Jindal. Children and education are a special focus. In one initiative to attract school dropouts and persuade them to stay on at school, the Foundation has partnered with the Akshaya Patra Trust to provide a nutritious midday meal to almost 150,000 children from 445 primary schools in and around the district each day.
In another project, the company has made available Computer Aided Learning Centres (CALC) in 25 Government Schools. Numerous other projects are themed around health, culture and heritage, the environment and sustainability. The Foundation is also working on the restoration of two temples within the nearby Hampi World Heritage Site.
Looking to the future, Sasindran is keen to see production increase, and he also wants to see more diversificationÔÇöa strategy which has served the group well over the years. ÔÇ£We already have many other interests such as aluminium, cement, infrastructure and mining. In line with this, the company has formed JSW Severfield Structures Ltd ( a strategic partnership with Severfield Reeve, UK ), and a state-of-the-art structural steel manufacturing facility, one of its kind in India, is fast coming up at the Vijayanagar complex. We are also a very large producer of electricity. Steel will always be important to us, but we have proved that there are many other areas in which we can be equally successful. But success is important not for its own sake, but for the difference we can make to peopleÔÇÖs lives,ÔÇØ he concludes.
