The Indian government is framing a 10-year action plan to increase steel shipping container manufacturing capacity in the country, a government official said on Friday, April 23.
He said that though the issue of shortage of steel shipping containers faced by exporters has been mitigated temporarily, one of serious issue that is facing the country is creating an ecosystem for container manufacturing, availability and cost of special steel to make such containers.
According to the official, the government will launch a 1-year action plan ensuring more companies enter the space of container manufacturing in larger numbers.
Currently about 75 percent of container manufacturing is taking place in China and the balance in South Korea.
The official said that domestic engineering companies like BHEL and DCM-Hyundai have capabilities of manufacturing steel containers and the government is working with these companies to begin manufacturing them on large scale.
The government is assessing how to go about increasing availability of key steel raw materials at competitive pricing to enable companies to set up economically viable container manufacturing units.
It was pointed out that COR-Ten special grade steel required for manufacturing containers was priced at INR 75/kg in the country and to make containers competitive to international benchmark the price of the special steel needed to be reduced to around INR 45/kg.
A beginning has been made in getting Indian companies to set up container manufacturing units, with the Gujarat government working on creating a special container manufacturing hub for companies to base their units.
Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) has also commenced preliminary work to set up a steel shipping container manufacturing unit at port town of Paradip, Odisha in land offered by the Paradip Port Trust.
