Dastur & Co to widen consultancy portfolio

With no new factory projects in the steel sector with the stress in the segment, MN Dastur & Co, the country’s oldest engineering consultancy, is considering other ways to drive its business.

 

In the past three years, except for Tata Steel’s Kalinganagar plant in Odisha, no other major one have been built or commissioned in the segment.

 

Atanu Mukherjee, president at MN Dastur, says the key business driver will have to be operational consultancy services. “After two-three years, we believe the sector will rebound,” he said.

 

Even so, the steel sector is 80 per cent of the company’s revenue and will remain a staple. However, Dastur aims to raise its presence in the non-ferrous segment, energy and mining.

 

Besides, the company is diversifying into other consultancy arms in the steel segment, such as energy efficiency for plants, optimising of performance and output, personnel and the like.

 

Mukherjee believes a third of the steel making industry is optimised in scale and production. The rest of the industry is faced with operational issues — production portfolio, labour management, bad debt.

 

“Restructuring of stressed steel plants is going to be a core business area for us and we will focus on offering comprehensive consulting to grow the top line,” he said. He would not share details on revenues.

 

Last year, Dastur had offered consultancy services to Rashtriya Ispat Nigam’s factory at Vizag, which aims to scale up production from the current 6.3 million tonnes a year to 11.5 mt by 2022.

 

The company says it is also eyeing potential in the Gulf countries, East Europe, South America and Vietnam.