Turning Scrap into Gold

You can sniff the iron in the air. A peculiar smell, it shimmies up your nose, tickles your throat, and leads to a sneeze. It8217;s the sce...

You can sniff the iron in the air. A peculiar smell, it shimmies up your nose, tickles your throat, and leads to a sneeze. It8217;s the scent of Mandi Gobindgarh, one that hits you full blast the moment you glide past the sea green Sirhind Canal, high on the sweet fumes of liquid jaggery wafting from sugarcane fields.

Along with this comes a change in landscape 8212; from green to brown speckled with grey. The dust never settles in this Steel Town of Punjab as endless trucks roll in with piles of iron scrap, and trundle back with shiny steel. A sub-tehsil of Fatehgarh Sahib district, this small township of 60,000 people which caters to 25 pc of the secondary steel requirement of the country, shot to worldwide fame on the first anniversary of 9/11 when the media corps discovered that a major chunk of the World Trade Centre scrap had found its way here.

But the iron men of Mandi Gobindgarh are only bemused at all this attention. 8216;8216;It8217;s nothing new. The town gets its scrap from the world over, be it South Africa, Ghana, Ukraine, US or Dubai,8217;8217; says Anush Chaudhari of Punjab Forging and Casting Pvt Ltd, whose father Karan Prakash set up the first forging unit at Gobindgarh in 8217;66.

Making money out of scrap is a skill that Gobindgarh residents have polished to an art-form. 8216;8216;We believe it8217;s a divine gift to the township by Sri Hargobind Singh, the sixth Sikh guru,8217;8217; says Anush. Local lore has it that after his battle-weary soldiers got their swords repaired here in 1645, the guru declared it would be famed for iron. Today, 99 per cent of the locals live off this metal. These include traders, who procure scrap from far and near, furnace owners who prepare ingots, also called garam kulfi due to their shape, steel rolling mills that churn out girders and other construction raw material; the forging industry which makes machines for the rolling mills, and machinery manufacturers.

8216;8216;Iron is the only business we know,8217;8217; chuckles Om Prakash Goyal, owner of Nabha Steels Ltd, one of the biggest furnaces in the township. 8216;8216;My great grandfather dealt in iron, so do my three sons, and we hope their children too will follow suit,8217;8217; he says as he flashes his chunky diamond-studded ring. This glint of affluence is commonplace here. You can8217;t help but notice it in the plush wood-panelled office swarming with iron traders handling fat sheaves of currency. And taking business calls from Georgia and Casablanca. The traders fall in three slots: the procurers who get scrap, suppliers who sell it to furnaces, and the marketing whiz who peddle finished goods. No wonder they call themselves the backbone of the iron industry.

But it8217;s a rough business. 8216;8216;It8217;s not easy to conduct business sitting 2,000 km away from the nearest port or iron ore deposit,8217;8217; says Rakesh Kumar, a scrap dealer who makes several trips to the Kandla port. The freight charges a cut into their profits as do global competitors like China and Japan.

8216;8216;These two are making it impossible for us to step into any scrap market abroad,8217;8217; complains the white-bearded Harbans Singh of Global Alloys, who pioneered the scrap import in the city 20 years ago. Today, he visits all the trouble spots of the world to get cheap scrap and boasts an office in Ukraine. 8216;8216;It8217;s a pity we don8217;t have good ties with Pakistan, otherwise we could have got loads of good iron junk from Afghanistan,8217;8217; he rues.

Story continues below this ad

The gleaming offices hide the backbreaking sweat and toil that goes into making scrap pay. 8216;8216;This town never sleeps, we work almost 16 to 21 hours a day,8217;8217; says Ajay Goyal of Nabha Steels. His furnace delivers molten kulfis ingots round-the-clock 8212; except three hours due to electricity curbs. The fire-spewing furnace, the soot-laced shed with mammoth cranes, humongous magnets, sky-high heaps of scrap, the sound, the heat 8212; it reminds one of Dante8217;s hell. But the workers, their clothes and faces painted back with smoke, are hard at work. 8216;8216;Safety is a major concern; a vehicle shocker, for instance, can act like a bomb if put in a furnace,8217;8217; says Goyal. Anush Chaudhary whose office reverberates with the sound of a 30-tonne motorised hammer at work laughs: 8216;8216;I8217;ve got so used to it that I don8217;t think I would be able to feel a quake.8217;8217;

Mahinder Pal Gupta, president of the Furnace Owners8217; Association, rues that the government policies are adding to their difficulties. 8216;8216;The recent hike in power has dealt a blow to our profits. As it is, we are reeling under recession and the added burden of freight charges.8217;8217; The industrialists also grumble about the periodic raids by the excise and pollution board officials, besides the uneven tax structures across the nation.

The secret of their success despite all odds? 8216;8216;Pure hard work,8217;8217; says Goyal. It also pays to have everything under one shed. 8216;8216;From scrap to the most complicated machinery, you can get everything here,8217;8217; he adds. 8216;8216;Besides, there are construction materials like channel a kind of girder and patti that you don8217;t get elsewhere.8217;8217;

Last, but not the least, they cite their entrepreneurial spirit. 8216;8216;We take risks, others don8217;t.8217;8217; No wonder they turn scrap into gold.