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Bond of steel: Five companies plan alliance to push sales

Ishita Ayan Dutt

Putting aside competition, steel majors Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Tata Iron and Steel Co Ltd (Tata Steel) and steel companies of the Essar, Jindal and Ispat groups have decided to form Indian Steel Alliance (ISA) for promotion of steel in the domestic market.

The organisation would be formed on the lines of The SteelAlliance of the United States and Canada, which has more than 100 companies as members. "We have had discussions with Mark Stephenson, executive director of the SteelAlliance," a SAIL source said.

The ISA would appoint consultants to carry out a survey on steel that would help determine the target segment for steel apart from commercial users. It would chalk out a five-year programme for creating awareness about steel. The corpus for the campaign is yet to be decided, said sources.

"In the US, a survey revealed that the decision makers for households are primarily the housewives. A lot of steel is also used for household consumption in goods like television, cars, and refrigerators, and hence this is an important segment" said a source.

While the nature of the campaign will be determined by the result of the survey, sources indicated that it would be a heavy budget campaign with contributions from all the steel majors.

The SteelAlliance of the US and Canada carried out a five-year, $100-million advertising campaign to tell consumers-the people who buy automobiles, appliances, houses, canned food or any of the many products made with steel-about the material's attributes.

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