ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India Ltd (AM/NS India) will expand its Indian flagged fleet as the steel maker jointly owned by ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel seeks to secure supply chain in the face of a shortage of Indian registered ships in the market to ferry cargo on local routes, the company’s head of shipping and chartering said.
AM/NS Shipping & Logistics Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned unit of AM/NS India, purchased two Kamsarmax ships last year to ferry cargo along the coast. It is close to buying two more ships from the second-hand market.
“We move around 12 mln tons of cargo from India’s east coast to Hazira in Gujarat on the west coast where the principal production site is located. We are also dispatching 1 mln tons of steel by coastal route. We prefer Indian flag vessels but sadly not enough are available in the market and hence have to look for foreign flag vessels,” Ashutosh Mathur, Head-Shipping & Chartering at AM/NS India, said.
“For a steel plant, it is very important to secure the supply chain, right from the mines to the logistics and delivering to the customers doorstep,” he said.
AM/NS India requires some 200 ships a year to move cargo along the coast and the number is expected to go up as the steel plant expands capacity from 8.6 mln tons.
