Tata Steel – Company Profile
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Tata Steel |
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Founded |
1907 |
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Headquarters |
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Area served |
Worldwide |
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Key people |
Ratan Tata
(Chairman) |
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Hot and cold
rolled coils and sheets |
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$21.582 billion (2010) |
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$-423.5 million (2010) |
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$24.446 billion (2010) |
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$5.082 billion (2010) |
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81,269 (2010) |
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Tata Steel is the world's sixth largest steel manufacturer. It operates in more than 20 countries and has a commercial presence in over 50.
The company was established in Jamshedpur, India, in 1907. In the past few years, Tata Steel has invested in Corus (UK, renamed Tata Steel Europe), Millennium Steel (renamed Tata Steel Thailand) and NatSteel Holdings (Singapore). With these, the company has created a manufacturing and marketing network in Europe, South East Asia and the Pacific-rim countries. It has the capacity to produce over 30 million tonnes of crude steel every year.
Areas of
business
The company produces crude steel and basic steel products, and makes steel for
building and construction applications through Tata BlueScope Steel, its joint
venture with Australia's BlueScope Steel.
Tata Steel has also set up joint ventures for the development of limestone mines in Thailand, the procurement of low-ash coal from Australia and coking coal from Mozambique, and the setting up of a deep-sea port in Orissa in India. The company is exploring opportunities in the titanium dioxide business in Tamil Nadu, India, and will soon be producing high carbon ferrochrome from its plant in South Africa.
Joint ventures, subsidiaries, associates
Location
Tata Steel is headquartered at Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, India.
Company History:
Tata Iron & Steel Company Ltd. (TISCO) is the iron and steel production company associated with the Tata group of some 80 different industrial and other business enterprises in India, founded by members of the Tata family. TISCO operates as India's largest integrated steel works in the private sector with a market share of nearly 13 percent and is the second largest steel company in the entire industry. Its products and services include hot and cold rolled coils and sheets, tubes, construction bars, forging quality steel, rods, structurals, strips and bearings, steel plant and material handling equipment, ferro alloys and other minerals, software for process controls, and cargo handling services. Through its subsidiaries, TISCO also offers tinplate, wires, rolls, refractories, and project management services.
Tata's Early Beginnings in the 1800s
The story of TISCO is the story of one family or, more accurately, one man whose vision and determination to give India a modern industrial economy helped provide a platform for the country's independence half a century after his death. At the same time, he helped create what was by 1970 India's biggest nonpublic enterprise. Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was born into a well-to-do family of Bombay Parsees in 1839. The Parsees, a religious minority group, had carved a niche for themselves in business, in this case in the economy of Victorian India, which was dominated by British interests and was being developed as a client imperial economy. Tata's father was a successful merchant with interests in the cotton trade to Britain. Tata joined the family business after an education at Elphinstone College in Bombay and was sent to Lancashire, England, in 1864 to represent the firm there. This was to be the first of many travels in Europe, North America, and the Far and Middle East during which he formulated his ideas on the best strategy to realize his own ambitions for success in business and to contribute to the economic development of India. Tata's own background was in cotton production. He believed that mills could function successfully in India in close proximity to the cotton-producing areas in the west of the country, thereby putting them in a strong position to undercut their Lancashire competitors. He obtained air conditioning equipment from suppliers in the United States and the latest cotton spinning machinery installed to provide the optimum climatic conditions for spinning. His early ventures showed promise and in 1874 he founded his first company, the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company. Three years later, on the same day that Queen Victoria was declared empress of India, he opened the Empress mill in Nagpur. As Tata was taking his first steps toward establishing a viable cotton spinning business, Indian nationalism also was beginning to find a focus for its aspirations through the Indian National Congress. Tata was present at its inaugural meeting and his devotion to the cause of an independent India was undoubtedly a motivating factor in his own drive for success in business. Cotton was only a start. From his travels in other industrialized nations he had come to identify three essential elements for a modern industrial economy: steel production, hydroelectric power, and technical education. Although he did not live to see any of his schemes in these areas come to fruition, he laid the foundations on which his sons, and then later generations of his family, were able to build to realize his ambitions.
Tata Steel was established by Indian Parsi businessman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata in 1907 (he died in 1904, before the project was completed). Tata Steel introduced an 8-hour work day as early as in 1912 when only a 12-hour work day was the legal requirement in Britain. It introduced leave-with-pay in 1920, a practice that became legally binding upon employers in India only in 1945. Similarly, Tata Steel started a Provident Fund for its employees as early as in 1920, which became a law for all employers under the Provident Fund Act only in 1952. Tata Steel's furnaces have never been disrupted on account of a labour strike and this is an enviable record.
Tata Steel has set an ambitious target to achieve a capacity of 100 million tonne by 2015. Managing Director B. Muthuraman stated that of the 100 million tonne, Tata Steel is planning a 50-50 balance between greenfield facilities and acquisitions.
The company is facing increasing criticism that the drive for growth and profits is completely overshadowing its once famed philanthropy, and causing lasting social and environmental damage at various locations. In response, Tata cites its programs for environment and resource conservation, including a reduction in greenhouse erosion, raw materials and water consumption. The company has increased waste re-use and re-cycling, and reclaims land at its captive mines and collieries through forestation. Tata Steel's chief, environment and occupational health, says, "Our capital investment in pollution-abatement solutions was in the vicinity of Rs 400 crore in 2003-04.".
The Dhamra Port, a Joint Venture between Larsen & Toubro and Tata Steel, has come in for criticism from groups such as Greenpeace, Wildlife Protection Society of India and the Orissa Traditional Fishworkers' Union. The port is being built within five kilometres of the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary, a Ramsar wetland of international importance, home to an impressive diversity of mangrove species, saltwater crocodiles and an array of avian species. The port will also be approximately 15 km. from the turtle nesting beaches of the Gahirmatha Sanctuary, and turtles are also found immediately adjoining the port site. Aside from potential impacts on nesting and feeding grounds of the turtles, the mudflats of the port site itself are breeding grounds for horseshoe crabs as well as rare species of reptiles and amphibians. One such species, the amphibian Fejervarya cancrivora, is the first record for the Indian mainland.