Kolkata, July 1 (IANS) Despite the current uncertainty in the global steel industry, Japan’s Kobe Steel has set up a subsidiary here to market machinery and related equipment, a senior company official said.
“We planned this project two years back. India has a huge industrial market - machineries, steel manufacturing,” Kobe Steel’s industrial machinery division director Kazuhide Naraki told reporters here late Tuesday.

“To begin with, we have set up a subsidiary in Kolkata to market steel production machinery in India,” he said, adding: “We have a sales target of around $50 million per year.”

The subsidiary, Kobelco Machinery India, will sell steel rolling mills, continuous casters, nonferrous rolling mills and presses shipped from Japan.

Emphasising that it was not enough to merely sell a product, Naraki said: “After-sales service is also important, which is another reason for setting up this unit.”

The $22-billion Kobe Steel holds a 90 percent stake in the subsidiary, while trading firm Shinsho Corp, a Kobe Steel affiliate, owns the remaining 10 percent. The Indian entity will have an equity base of Rs.4 million.

Naraki said the company has already received queries from “four-five Indian companies” but refused to disclose details.

Kobe Steel also has plans to set up a manufacturing unit in Kolkata in about a year, he added.