7th Asia Steel International Conference at Bhubaneswar from Feb 6

Bhubaneswar: Tata Steel, in association with the Indian Institute of Metals, will hold the 7th Asia Steel International Conference at Bhubaneswar from 6-9 February this year.

It was announced at a press conference held at Tata Centre, Kolkata, by Anand Sen, President, TQM & Steel Business, Tata Steel, & Chairman – Asia Steel 2018.

The last Asia Steel conference was held in 2015 at Yokohama, Japan. This major conference is held every three years and provides a platform for the exchange of knowledge on various aspects of the global steel industry. Around 70 Keynote speakers, half of them from overseas countries such as China, Korea, Japan, Netherlands, UK, US, Germany, Belgium, Canada, etc. will address the conference.

This Asia Steel Conference will address and focus on different challenges faced by the steel industry viz., optimizing specific consumption of raw materials, especially coke and iron ore, how to use low-grade raw materials, along with decreasing the energy consumption in various ironmaking and steelmaking operations and, thereby, reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The steel conference will also delve into enhancing waster utilization with a focus on developing high-strength steel for the automotive sector and steel for the construction sector.

The Asia Steel Conference will be a platform for experts from across the globe to discuss new surface treatments, innovative and green technologies for ironmaking and promote automation and digitization in the steel industry as well.

Global steel production in 2017 has been pegged at 1622 million tonnes and is expected to grow by 2% to 1648 MnT in 2018. The Indian growth rate is pegged between 7.2% and 7.8% in FY 19 driven largely by the recent measures taken by the government in the construction and capital goods sectors along with revival strategies undertaken in the automotive and consumer durables sectors.

The expected growth in these sectors will help in augmenting the steel demand in India, which is expected to increase from the present 88 million tonnes in FY18 to 93 million tonnes in FY19. The

robust international steel prices will also provide a chance to Indian steelmakers to export steel up to 2.5 million tonnes in the coming fiscal, up from 2 million tonnes in the current fiscal.