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 has said.
AM/NS Shipping & Logistics Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned unt 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.
“Because of less Indian tonnage in the market, we have bought two Kamsarmax vessels and further we are planning to increase our fleet,” Ashutosh Mathur, Head-Shipping & Chartering at AM/NS India, said at the India Dry Bulk Cargo Summit 2023 (Dry Con 2023) organised by The Shipping Tribune in Mumbai on 16 June.
“We move around 12 million tonnes (mt) 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 mt 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,” Mathur 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 mt.
“We are looking to expand the fleet mostly in the handy size vessel segment. We have a lot of coastal cargo to move, we are taking a lot of foreign flag vessels now,” he said.
Chartering foreign flag vessels is not that easy because the country’s coastal trade is reserved for Indian registered ships under a so-called cabotage law and foreign flag ships can be hired only when Indian ships are not available for the job.
“AM/NS India is also looking to decongest road and rail by promoting more of sea borne transport, dispatching steel cargo through roll-on, roll-off (Ro-Ro) vessels. We are also committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” Mathur stated.
The steel maker said that charterers such as AM/NS India should shoulder “lot of responsibility” for reducing GHG emissions.
