High input costs to put pressure on steel prices: Tata Steel

Mumbai, Jan 17 (PTI) High input costs are likely tocontinue to put pressure on steel prices in the domesticmarket even as demand is expected to remain high, Tata Steeltoday said.

"Steel prices will continue to increase in the nearfuture due to a rise in the cost of raw materials. But thedemand for steel will go up," Tata Steel''s Managing Director,H M Nerurkar, told reporters here.

Prices of raw materials such as coking coal are risingand will continue to rise in the near future, he said.

The price of spot coking coal is currently hovering ataround USD 260-265 a tonne in Queensland, the largest coalproducing province in Australia, which is facing itsworst-ever floods in the past few decades.

Earlier, Tata Steel had increased prices of its productsby up to Rs 1,500-Rs 1,700 per tonne.

Asked if the company was mulling any upward revision inits steel prices in the near future, Nerurkar said, "we havenot decided anything yet. We will take a call at the righttime."

On its Rs 2,300-crore greenfield Kalinganagar project inOrissa, Nerurkar said, "the company will start constructionof the plant by end-this month."

"Construction will start this month-end and the firstphase of production will start by early-2013," he said.

Tata Steel had signed an MoU with the Orissa Governmentway back in November 2004 for setting up a 6 MTPA integratedsteel plant at the Kalinganagar Industrial Complex in Jajpurdistrict of the state.