JSW Steel's 50 MT plan on track despite Bhushan setback: CEO Jayant Acharya

Economic Times

26-05-2025

Agencies JSW Steel CEO Jayant Acharya
JSW Steel's aim to boost annual capacity to 50 million tonnes by FY31 will not be impacted by the recent Supreme Court ruling for Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd (BPSL) as the former is already pursuing brownfield expansion at some sites besides setting up a greenfield plant in Odisha, a senior executive said.
The company has appointed a legal counsel and believes that it has strong grounds to avail all the available legal remedies, said Jayant Acharya, chief executive, JSW Steel. He, though, did name the legal counsel.
Earlier this month, the top court struck down the company's acquisition of BPSL, citing various lapses in compliance.Acharya confirmed ET's report on May 23 that the company has sent demand notices to banks seeking refund of payments it made for the acquisition."It is a communication which is basically as per the process, a communication which has to go to the CoC (Committee of Creditors)," Acharya told ET. "We have basically sought time to be able to implement and discuss all the possible legal remedies," he said.
While net profit at the country's largest steelmaker fell to a nine-year low in FY25, the company is confident of its cash flows improving this fiscal, helped by several favourable factors, he said."We managed to reduce our overall debt and we ended the year with a very strong liquidity cash flow of ₹19,000 crore. So, we have enough capital to be able to do our expansions," Acharya said. "There is no worry about it."JSW Steel has planned a capital expenditure of ₹20,000 crore for FY26, up from the ₹14,656 crore spent last fiscal."Our capacity in India is today at about 34.2 million tonne and will go up by another 2 million tonne in Vijayanagar because of the upgradation and some debottlenecking for half a million," Acharya said. "The phase 3 of Dolvi will add another 5 million tonne, and with some debottlenecking at other plants, we should be able to reach about 42 million tonne by September 2027," he said.JSW Steel also plans to add 5 million tonne capacity to its JVML plant and 2 million tonne at Salav in Maharashtra. "These two itself add together to cross 50 million tonne," he said. It plans to spend ₹21,000 crore on capital expenditure in the next fiscal, and ₹20,863 crore in fiscal 2028.JSW Steel generated consolidated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation or Ebitda of ₹22,904 crore in FY25 on sales of 26.45 million tonne of steel. It has guided for sales of 29.20 million tonne this fiscal, and sees volume growth underpinning Ebitda improvement."Our volumes are growing by 10%, and will give us incremental Ebitda," he said. Price hikes taken from February onwards, lower costs of coking coal, cost-effective operations at JVML (JSW Vijayanagar Metallics Ltd) plant, a higher share of renewable energy coming in, and iron ore mines becoming operational will also aid the Ebitda," he said.Improvement in steel prices will also aid profitability. "What I can highlight is that the safeguard duty initiative taken by the government to provide a level playing field to the industry has been very positive, so at least the high exports of steel from China and some of the Asian countries will be restricted, and we'll have a better price equation," he said.