Production of Different types of Steel in India

These are the key Types of Iron, with respect to different stages of readiness for the final consumer:
1) Hot Metal: This is the "liquid gold" of the steel industry. It is the molten iron tapped directly from a blast furnace. It is high in carbon and extremely hot (around 1500°C), usually sent immediately to a steel-making furnace without being allowed to cool.
2) Pig Iron: When Hot Metal is poured into molds and cooled into solid ingots for easy transport, it becomes Pig Iron. The name comes from old-fashioned molds that looked like piglets. Pig Iron, is brittle and must be remelted and refined before it can be used.
3) Sponge Iron: This is produced by a "direct reduction" process that does not melt the ore. It results in porous, honeycomb-like pellets. India is the world’s largest producer of sponge iron, which is a preferred raw-material for smaller mini-mills that uses Electric Arc Furnaces.
4) Crude Steel: This is the first solid state of actual steel, in the form of billets, blooms, or slabs. It has excess carbon and impurities of pig iron removed but hasn't yet been shaped into a final product.
5) Finished Steel: This is the end-market product. It includes steel that has been rolled, forged, or drawn into specific shapes like TMT bars for buildings, sheets for cars, or rails for trains.

India crossed the 125 million tonne mark, maintaining its position as the world's second-largest producer. The most striking figure is the jump in Finished Steel to 123.2 million tonnes, a nearly 8.5% increase from the previous year. This indicates that Indian manufacturers are increasingly moving away from just producing raw materials and are instead focusing on value-added products ready for the construction, automotive, and infrastructure sectors.
The 2023 figures also reveal a slight cooling in Pig Iron production (5.9 MT) alongside a steady rise in Hot Metal (81.2 MT). This suggests a shift in industrial efficiency: more iron is being kept in its molten "hot" state for immediate conversion into steel within integrated plants, rather than being cooled into "pigs" for transport.
The data reflects a post-pandemic recovery that has now transitioned into a robust growth phase, driven by the Indian government’s massive infrastructure spending and the "Make in India" initiative.