Tata Steel CEO shows Disinterest in any New Acquisitions states ‘Not So Keen’

Mumbai(India), 14/08/23: Tata Steel, which is expanding in India, is not interested in making any additional acquisitions, according to company CEO T V Narendran.

According to inputs from PTI Narendran’s statement comes as Vedanta Ltd is assessing and evaluating its steel and steel-making raw materials businesses.

Vedanta Ltd announced in June that it will immediately begin reviewing and evaluating a wide range of options, including the potential strategic sale of part or all of its steel companies.

In response to a question on his company’s interest in purchasing Vedanta Ltd’s steel industry, Narendran stated, “Not so keen on any other new acquisitions… We don’t need it.”

He noted that there is a lot to do at Tata Steel’s existing facilities. The company intends to increase its yearly installed steelmaking capacity in India to 40 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) by 2030, up from roughly 22 MTPA at the moment.

Vedanta Limited purchased Jharkhand-based steel company ESL Steel Limited through an insolvency resolution process in June 2018.
The company built a greenfield integrated production facility, which is now operational with a capacity of 2.5 MT per year.

Narendran, who is also the company’s MD, commented on Tata Steel UK operations. He said, “we are (still) engaged with the UK government to find a solution. If we can find a common ground with the government (there).”

He added that there is no issue in the United Kingdom and production is unaffected. The main difficulty, he says, is that the upstream assets are ancient and the equipment’s reliability isn’t always outstanding.

Tata Steel, headquartered in India, controls the UK’s largest steelworks in Port Talbot, South Wales, and employs over 8,000 people across all of its businesses in the country.

The corporation has asked the UK government for 1.5 billion pounds to carry out its decarbonisation plans. However, earlier this year, the British government submitted a counter-offer that was significantly lower than the company’s expectations.