Tata Steel signs technical agreement with Nippon
Steel
February
18, 2002
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Jamshedpur:
Tata
Steel has announced the signing of a technical agreement
with Nippon Steel Corporation which will take Tata Steel's
cold rolled automotive steels into the market for the
highest-end applications, the most sophisticated customer
segment that any steel producer can aspire to serve. The
agreement was signed by Mr B. Muthuraman, Managing Director,
Tata Steel, and Mr I. Koyama, Representative Director
and Executive Vice-President, Nippon Steel Corporation.
Tata Steel is already serving the ever growing sophisticated
steel market for Indian auto majors such as Ashok Leyland,
Tata Engineering, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, etc.
And the steels are under test by others.
High-quality sheets for the automobile industry are a
very important component of the product mix of Tata Steel's
cold-rolling mill. The sheets for the external panels
for automobiles require high formability and adherence
to strict surface-quality norms. For supplies in 'coil'
form, kilometers of surface without any surface defect
or mark needs to be assured.
Along with attaining the capability of producing this
high-quality material, the company also requires to
have approval from the auto majors. Generally, the auto
majors like to tie up with one or two steel-makers on
a long-term basis.
The agreement with Nippon Steel Corporation has been
designed to meet both these ends. It is important to
realise that the quality of cold-rolled sheets for auto
applications is influenced by a long chain of upstream
processes, such as the quality of hot metal used for
steel-making, the primary and secondary steel-making
processes, casting operation, inspection and dressing
of cast slabs, the hot-rolling practice and, finally,
the cold-rolling and annealing processes.
Accordingly, the scope of the agreement starts with
pre-treatment of hot metal, down to the cold-rolling
and annealing practices. The external processing activities
have also been included to exclude deterioration of
quality during the last and final stage of manufacturing.
The products included for this agreement are:
(a) Cold rolled sheets of DQ, DDQ and EDD Q grades of
AI / K and IF Steel for inner and outer panel of automotive
body, including high-strength steel sheets (up to 590
n/mm2, the current trend with international automakers),
produced through the batch annealing process at Jamshedpur.
(b) Materials for continuous galvanised products of
DQ, DDQ and EDD Q grades of AI / K and IF Steel for
inner and outer panel of automotive body.
The scope of the agreement covers the following:
(a) Advise on investment decisions.
(b) Technical assistance in through process control
(management of the chain of production processes).
(c) Operational assistance in all areas which influence
the production of automotive products.
(d) Training of Tata Steel personnel.
(d) Technical assistance and direct involvement of experts
in obtaining approval from two automotive majors in
India.
A detailed time schedule of activities has been worked
out. The duration is 36 months from the effective date
of the agreement (April 1, 2002). A Steering committee
will be reviewing the progress of the agreement periodically.
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