Sir. Ganesan Natarajan
WT Director, President & C.E.O.,
Ennore Coke Limited (An ISO 9001:2008 Company)
The steel industry is ambling towards its natural habitat in the eastern parts of India. Access to raw materials, skilled manpower, a rich legacy of steel making, excellent smithy's, nearness to ports ... The reasons for this shift are known to all.
It is also a well known fact that a substantial portion of the steel that India will produce in the future will be through the blast furnace route - a process that requires metallurgical coke, the only ingredient that we do not have in abundance and are dependent on imports. The most astonishing fact is that while the steel making facilities are moving eastwards, most of India's Merchant Coke producers are located in the western coast, for whom the logistics simply will not work out.
Under the circumstances, there remains a huge scope for the development of the coke industry in the east, something that the new Government should take up in earnest if we are to put west Bengal on the resurgence mode and ride this impending steel boom to economic prosperity. West Bengal is ideally situated when we consider the fact that most of the raw coal imports for coke making are from Australia which will accord a special freight advantage because of our location over the western coast.
Finally, such a move will also ensure that the scattered and fragmented coke makers come together to form an alliance so that we may collectively have better bargaining powers with the suppliers, built roughly on the model of the Japanese Steel Alliance which plays a crucial role in determining global prices of the commodity.
West Bengal is now poised to keep her tryst with her economic destiny and it is our privilege to be here at this important juncture. The Merchant Coke Industry wishes to congratulate the government for its transparent and proactive role and let it be known that we are ready to dour bit for the resurgence of the state.
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