To support India’s growing demand for scrap, imports will remain important to cater to industry demand, the Material Recycling Association of India’s Secretary General Amar Singh informed Kallanish in an exclusive interview.

"As you are aware, India’s appetite [for scrap] is very big, and it is going to grow further as we are developing at a very fast pace," Amar Singh said. "Till there is no major political change, I do not see that imports of scrap are going to decrease."

"The current government knows very well that India is in a deficit in terms of the availability of scrap, and we do not have good-quality scrap available domestically. It can only be fulfilled through import routes," Singh added.

Speaking about government policies to scale up national scrap generation, the secretary general said: "Yes, the government has come up with various policies to increase the scrap generation, like the Steel Scrap Policy, the Circular Economy Policy Framework, and the End-of-Life Vehicle Policy, but all these policies will take time to increase the availability of scrap."

Going forward, in the next five to six years, the demand for scrap will further increase on the back of decarbonisation plans to make greener steel, Singh said.

"Moreover, we are seeing that the major blast furnaces in India are also planning to increase their scrap charge mix from the current 8–10% of scrap to maybe 10-15% or up to 20% in the next five years. As a result, I see that the demand for scrap will rise tremendously, and standalone, this demand cannot be fulfilled by the local scrap, and we will have to remain dependent on scrap in the future as well," the secretary general informed.

On MRAI’s role Singh noted: "We have recently done ten Aazadi Ka Amrit Mahautsav (AKAM) awareness conferences in India. The main purpose of these conferences was to promote decarbonisation and green steel and to formalise the informal scrap sector in the country."

"MRAI is having a regular dialogue with the government and various steel mills in India about the policies, support to increase the production of green steel, and decarbonisation, so as to increase the production of value-added products and thus scale up the exports as well," Singh added.

"The government is also working on providing incentives on the circular economy path to induction and electric arc furnaces to promote the usage of renewable energy in steelmaking," the secretary general said.

Singh also informed that MRAI is in direct discussion with the Ministry of External Affairs about a possible scrap ban by the European Union. "MRAI is in touch with the steel ministry and Ministry of External Affairs to talk to the European Union on a World Trade Organisation level about how scrap is a crucial raw material and no restriction should be placed on the trade of scrap," Singh concluded.