Tata Steel Commits ₹10,000 Crore To Jharkhand As Low-Carbon Steel Push Accelerates

Tata Steel has committed ₹10,000 crore to its Jharkhand operations by 2028, with the bulk of the investment going toward a proprietary low-carbon steelmaking technology that the company has been developing and testing in the Netherlands for the past decade.

The investment will create 2,000 direct and indirect jobs and forms part of a broader push to expand India’s capacity from 27.35 million tonnes per annum to 40 million tonnes, replacing conventional high-emission processes with lower-carbon alternatives.

Proposed Investment Across Projects

• HIsarna & Easy Melting Technology: ₹7,000 crore

• Tinplate Division expansion: ₹2,600 crore

• Combi mill: ₹1,500 crore

The HIsarna Bet

HIsarna is a patented Tata Steel technology that produces iron directly without conventional coke ovens, sinter plants or pellet plants. It has been running at the company's Netherlands site for ten years at a capacity of 60,000 tonnes per annum, which the company said validates its scalability for commercial deployment.

A one-million-tonne pilot plant is now planned within the Jamshedpur ecosystem, using existing infrastructure. Hot metal from the pilot will feed directly into Jamshedpur's steel melt shops. Engineering studies have already begun.

The technology offers three distinct advantages over conventional blast furnace steelmaking:

• Flexibility to use Indian coking coal, reducing dependence on expensive imports

• Lower capital expenditure since multiple upstream facilities are not required

• Approximately 20% less carbon dioxide emissions than the traditional blast furnace route

Bigger Capacity Picture

Tata Steel's current consolidated steelmaking capacity stands at over 36 million tonnes per annum across India, the Netherlands and Thailand, excluding 3.2 million tonnes in the United Kingdom that is under transition. The long-term target is over 50 million tonnes, with the incremental 12-plus million tonnes primarily in India.

India operations currently span the following:

• Jamshedpur, Jharkhand: 11 million tonnes per annum.

• Gamharia, Jharkhand: 1 million tonnes per annum.

• Kalinganagar, Odisha: 9 million tonnes per annum, including NINL acquired through insolvency.

• Meramandali, Odisha: 5.6 million tonnes per annum.

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