Editorial – July 2023
After the covid pandemic was over, the metals industry was about to manifest a V shaped recovery, at least the experts were predicting that. The demand was growing and the disruptions in the supply chain were being fixed. With the government’s emphasis on infrastructure development, metals was supposed to have a clear ride in coming months. The process had already started but the Ukraine – Russia war extended beyond the expectations of most of the analysts and the global supply chain again got disrupted to some extent. As Ukraine and Russia both were big suppliers of raw materials and series to the world, the demand supply balance got disturbed to some extent. Eventually the metals fraternity learnt to live and operate in spite of the constraints created by the war and today even if the war has not ended, the international metals trade is not much affected by it.
I would say the Indian story is quite positive but not very outstanding. Yes, the consumption is increasing steadily. The infra dev projects are progressing steadily. Auto industry is doing good but not great. The exports are reduced mostly due to economy stagnation in EU and the other developed countries. Still with the prediction of more than 6% annual growth, India remains the fastest growing large economy on the planet and continues to attract many overseas companies to participate In this growing market.
Since last few years, the efforts to reduce the carbon footprint in the metal production have intensified. Hydrogen is seen as the replacement to carbon but the full scale commercialization is not yet achieved. We do get the news of successful metal production with 100% hydrogen but still a long way to go before the industry adopts it as a regular practice. Green manufacturing in real sense is still quite far but we, as an industry, are certainly going in that direction. Further, the industry now seems to have accepted that there is no avoiding Digitalization. Initially there was much resistance and many throught it was not more than being fashionable and more of a marketing trick. Now after few years, the industry has realized the real benefits like improvement in quality, quantity, efficiency, productivity etc. And is now ready to embrace it.
Where does India go from here? Will the growth continue ? Will India enter recession in coming months? Well, the present situation is so volatile and uncertain, it is quite risky to predict the future. Nobody knows the fate of Ukraine-Russia war, one can not foresee the next move by Chinese govt, the situation in many countries in the Middle East remains fluid. All these geopolitical factors will have a big impact on the global economy and also on metallurgical industry. My guesstimation is that india will continue to grow in this year aided by a good monsoon and if the economy grows, the metallurgical industry has to grow, isn’t it?