Designer stainless steel products gaining popularity

NEW DELHI/ MUMBAI - Stainless steel ware, which traditionally dominates the Indian household, is gradually shedding its dull image and is evolving as an upper end lifestyle product.

With the change in its shape and style the metal has come out of kitchen and has marked its presence in offices also.

However, despite its growing popularity the per capita use of stainless steel in India is just over one kg as compared to the four kg in China.

“India has a huge gap between demand and production capacity. Yes, there is a space for more players to be accommodated in this market. So be it foreign investors who can bring in new technologies to the market, yes, they would be welcomed very nicely in the Indian market. There is a space for everybody,” said Jagesh Jain, director, P P Impex.

With more and more people realizing the benefits of using stainless steel, company like Jindal Stainless Steel is positioning it as an exclusive lifestyle medium with its brand Art d’ Inox.

“With this technique we were already creating art and patterns which were more art like rather than fashion so art itself is the inspiration here and if you look at the patterns that we have done are very fluid and we wanted to capture steel in a very fluid form,” said Gunjan Arora, designer, Art d’Inox.

India accounts for around five per cent of the global steel consumption and almost 75 per cent of the total steel used is for kitchenware.

Domestic and steel consumption in 2008 in India was 43.925 million tons. Its increased demand in national industry, a huge part of the international market is also served by this industry.

Today, India is in seventh position among all the crude steel producing countries. (ANI)