Metals makers worried as metallurgists migrate to other vocations

In a triumph of hope over the present ground reality of multi-year low prices, producers of steel to aluminium are chasing new capacity. In this context, President of Indian Institute of Metals Sashi Shekhar Mohanty has done well to bring into focus a concern in the metallurgical sector whether metals groups will have the benefit of engaging the right numbers of metallurgists at different levels of operation. The challenge is not confined to ensuring larger groups of students graduating in metallurgical engineering; creating an environment with the right package of incentives for them to participate in the making of ferrous and non-ferrous metals and doing research and development (R&D) work is also a challenge. To ensure steelmakers in their drive to achieve capacity of 300 million tonnes (mt) by 2025 do not run short of services of metallurgists, Mohanty recommends "academia, policymakers and industry leaders" put their heads together to stop the loss of fresh metallurgist graduates to other vocations. Producers of aluminium and zinc, too, want support from larger numbers of metallurgists in their growth quest.

The country's metals industries are at an "inflection point." We are the world's third largest steel maker with an output of 83.2 mt of crude kind in 2014. Our aluminium production in 2014-15 climbed to 2.05 mt, from 1.73 mt in 2013-14. This is to further rise in the current year as Hindalco ramps up production at its newly-commissioned smelters at Mahan Aluminium and Aditya Aluminium, each with annual capacity of 360,000 tonnes. India figures prominently in the world's mined zinc industry, with last year's production close to 900,000 tonnes. As the galvanising sector continues to deliver strong growth, the outlook for this non-ferrous metal, which provides corrosion resistance to steel, for an exception remains positive. Hindalco and Vedanta are also engaged in copper smelting based on imported copper concentrate. Whether it is steel, aluminium or zinc, India has got the mass. The challenge for us now is to acquire new technologies to be able to produce steel and aluminium using energy at the best global rates so that our carbon footprint is cut. For steel in particular, cost reduction will demand use of lesser quantities of all raw materials per unit of production.

According to Mohanty, the situation demands metallurgists to "adopt boundary-less research practices for delivering indigenous solutions". He underlines the need for knowledge sharing and collaboration between industry, government departments and educational institutions to take forward research relevant to local industry needs. The general perception is that steel and aluminium are to remain perennially locked in competition to find application in each other's traditional use areas. Nothing will illustrate this better than automobile where aluminium continues to make inroads at the cost of steel. The average use of aluminium in cars, once the sole preserve of steel, is up from a modest 35 kg in the 1970s to 152 kg now. By 2025, the average aluminium content in a car could be 250 kg.

Growing aluminium application in automobile, according to Mohanty, has triggered "significant research" in making ultra-light steel auto body (ULSAB) now delighting a growing number of automakers. ULSAB is a demonstration of steel's capability to reduce substantially the weight of auto body structure, while improving the safety quotient with improved driving performance. In this case, therefore, competition from aluminium proved to be the mother of ULSAB invention. Looking beyond competition, Mohanty sees different metals combining in "remarkable ways... to usher in new attributes" such as the fairly recent functionally graded materials (FGMs). A FGM is a two-component composite characterised by a compositional gradient from one component to the other. Composites are finding growing application beyond aerospace in automobile, construction and appliances.

Can our industry conduct R&D, which will restrict the import of electrical grade and automotive steels? It is a matter of concern that large volumes of foreign-origin steel continues to make it to India, not the least because demand fall in the domestic market has added aggressiveness to China selling the metal in the world market. Mohanty says for R&D to yield the desired results, there has to be "effective knowledge exchange among all stakeholders such as CSIR laboratories and steel producers in the public and private sectors." The industry has a critical role in using R&D results since making "these special steels require adherence to stringent operating practices and technological discipline".