Japan’s JFE Steel is betting on the Indian market

JFE Steel Corp expects India’s steel industry to surpass China’s in the long term and aims to position itself as the largest foreign producer in the country, Bloomberg reports.

In December last year, the Japanese company announced its largest foreign investment in India, worth nearly $2 billion, partly based on this belief, JFE Steel Executive Vice President Hiroyuki Ogawa told the agency. According to him, the company has not yet found another market that could follow India’s example, but is also considering opportunities in the US.

At the end of the year, JFE announced an investment of 157.5 billion rupees in a joint venture with India’s JSW Steel. The deal involves the transfer of the latter’s subsidiary BhushanBhushan Power & Steel’s steel plant in Odisha to the joint venture. The joint venture plans to increase steel production at the integrated steel plant to 10 million tons by 2030. There is also potential for future expansion to 15 million tons.

According to Ogawa, commercial operations will begin no later than 2029 or 2030.

The executive vice president of JFE Steel is also optimistic about India’s ability to solve the problem of cheap Chinese steel flooding the market, as the country is promoting a policy of local production.

JFE Steel aims to achieve overseas business profits of ¥200 billion ($1.3 billion) by fiscal 2034/2035 and expects the Indian joint venture to account for at least a quarter of that amount.