India’s first amorphous electrical steel manufacturing facility aims to cut 30,000 tons of imports – CNBC TV18

Japan-based Proterial is investing $80 million in a manufacturing facility in Sri City in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, under the PLI scheme for Speciality Steel in what will be India’s first amorphous electrical steel manufacturing facility.

The company said that India is fully import-dependent on amorphous metal material, with an annual demand of around 70,000 tonnes, adding that its Andhra Pradesh facility is slated to produce 30,000 tonnes of amorphous metal per year in the first phase of production, scheduled to begin in October 2026.

Amorphous metal is an electrical-grade steel used in power transformers and is expected to witness a rise in demand amid growing per capita power consumption and the government’s push for electricity-intensive data centres.

Proterial’s CEO Sean Stack told CNBC-TV18 that the use of amorphous metal will improve the efficiency of power distribution transformers by up to 30%. He indicated that amorphous material would help transformer manufacturers and make the grid much more efficient.

In a statement, the company said that the use of amorphous metal materials in transformer cores can reduce standby power loss (no-load loss) compared to those with electromagnetic steel sheets as the core material.

Amid growing global demand for electrical power, Proterial will establish a production site for the amorphous metal material Metglas in India to enable higher efficiency for transformers. Proterial already has two operational amorphous metal manufacturing units in Japan and the US.

It currently produces Metglas for the Indian market at its Japan facility. Metglas (India) has a 74% stake held by Proterial and a 26% stake held by Shirdi Sai Electricals Ltd, an Indian transformer manufacturer with over 75,000 MVA capacity.

Chairman and Managing Director of Shirdi Sai Electricals Ltd (SSEL) N. Visveswara Reddy, said that the country is looking to double electrical steel consumption from the current 6 lakh tons to 12 lakh tons by 2032. While he stated that the initial cost of amorphous steel may be higher than the current grade of steel used in transformers, he indicated that the total cost of ownership will be lower overall due to higher transformer efficiency in the long run.