ABSTRACT
The steel scenario was one of synergy, with the secondary rerollers rolling out the semis of integrated steel into bars and rods. A major difference–between the electric arc furnaces of the western world and of India–is that the Indian furnaces produced largely mild steel, while those in the West were used for the production of high carbon steel and even silicon steel, specialized varieties for engineering uses. Sometime, around the end of the 1990s, came the great Indian discovery of sponge iron, a form of directly reduced iron that changed the face of the Indian steel industry, lifting it up from the eighth largest steel producer to be among the top three, at present. Sponge iron is directly reduced iron in its solid form by the use of either natural gas or non-coking coal. In effect, induction furnaces, with the use of sponge iron, were actually integrated and primary steel producers, albeit in small scale.
