SAIL’s Salem Steel Plant has started rolling out a select range of kitchenware and tableware products made on its premises. Besides, it makes bulk cooking and storage vessels, kitchen equipment, and canteen furniture.
On offer are about 50 products.
Speaking to The Hindu , a senior official of SAIL’s Salem Steel Plant said: “The public have to be educated that not all stainless steel utensils are made by the material supplied by us. There are several counterfeits in the market that have contributed to damaging our name and brand. So, we decided to start marketing finished products that can be used at home and they will all have the embossed SAIL logo on them.”
To fight counterfeits, SAIL took a conscious decision to offer quality products at a reasonable price to the consumers. It entered into a pact with LLM Appliances last year to form a Special Business Unit (SBU) to produce utensils. While LLM Appliances has design and skill capability, SAIL will offer its premises to produce utensils. The SBU started operations in April and the products started tumbling out of the assembly line in the second week of July. The SBU will produce 500 tonnes of utensils every year. In the first phase, it appointed three distributors and subsequently eight distributors in various States. “Till recently, we were offering stainless steel utensils to corporate and institutions on specific orders or during festival seasons. The response had been overwhelming. On an experimental basis, we rolled out our products in Kannur, Bengaluru, and Salem,” he said.
“From now on, it is available in a showroom located in North Usman Road, T. Nagar Chennai. In the coming months, we will enter cities including Kolkata, New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Udaipur,” he said. Earlier, some of these products were offered through Flipkart. SAIL has now reworked its sales strategy and is joining hands with e-commerce players such as Snapdeal and Amazon, to offer products online, according to sources.
