Prakash Industries is an integrated steel maker that turned itself into a miner - it owns the iron ore and coal that feed its furnaces, so its factory floor begins inside its own captive mines rather than at a supplier’s gate. Incorporated in 1980, the company spent four decades layering backward integration onto a steel plant in Chhattisgarh, first by starting commercial extraction at its Sirkaguttu iron ore mine in Odisha in FY20 and then by firing up its own Bhaskarpara commercial coal mine in February 2025. The recurring approach is simple: lock in the raw materials that swing steel margins the most, then use the cost advantage to sell intermediate steel to other manufacturers - a B2B model built on owning the inputs, not just processing them.
Business segments
Four engines that feed one furnace - captive iron ore, captive coal, captive power, and the steel plant they supply - plus a small PVC pipe business that rides the same industrial backbone.
1. Integrated steel: the furnace that everything else feeds
The company makes sponge iron, billets and ferro alloys and sells them to secondary steel producers who turn them into finished goods - it is a raw-material supplier to the steel industry, not a brand on the shelf.
- One plant, four stages - the 1.2 million-tonne-per-annum integrated steel plant in Chhattisgarh runs a Sponge Iron Division, an Induction Furnace Division, a Submerged Arc Furnace Division and a captive power plant, all on one site, so hot metal moves straight from kiln to furnace without reheating or long-haul freight.
- Sells intermediates, not end products - its main products are sponge iron, steel billets and ferro alloys, and its main customers are secondary steel producers who buy on 30-60 day credit terms; the company serves only the domestic market across eight Indian states and has zero exports.
- Finished steel is the smaller sibling - a 1.1 million-tonne-per-annum finished-steel facility in Raipur makes wire rods, HB wires and TMT bars for construction and industrial applications, but the core of the business is selling the intermediates that other mills need.
- Waste is fuel, not landfill - slag metals are recovered and reused in steelmaking, dolo char is burned in the power plant’s boilers, fly ash goes to a brick plant on site or to cement factories, and the plant holds Zero Liquid Discharge status, recycling all wastewater through effluent and sewage treatment plants.
- Highest-ever volumes in FY25 - the company sold 9.78 lakh tonnes of steel products in the year, its highest annual sales volume, while the domestic steel industry produced roughly 152 million tonnes and grew demand at about 12%.
2. Captive iron ore: the mine that insulates the margin
The Sirkaguttu iron ore mine in Odisha supplies the company’s own furnaces, so the single largest raw-material cost is set by extraction cost, not by the merchant market.
- Owned, not rented - the company holds the Sirkaguttu captive iron ore mine and began commercial extraction in the fourth quarter of FY20, mining roughly 4.7 lakh tonnes in its first full year and scaling to 7.8 lakh tonnes the following year, a 65% jump.
- Mining plan already expanded - the approved mining plan has been raised from 7.5 lakh tonnes to 10 lakh tonnes per annum, giving the steel plant room to grow without buying ore from third parties.
- Pellets made next door - iron ore fines that cannot go straight into the kiln are sent to nearby pelletisation plants in Chhattisgarh under conversion agreements, and the resulting pellets are fed into the Champa plant, so even the fines become usable feedstock.
3. Captive coal: the second leg of raw-material independence
The Bhaskarpara commercial coal mine in Chhattisgarh began shipping coal to the steel plant in February 2025, and because it is a commercial licence the company can also sell surplus coal on the open market.
- A 30-year mining lease on 932 hectares - the mine was won through auction under the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act and received its Vesting Order in November 2021, with a rated capacity of 10 lakh tonnes per annum that the company is now working to enhance to 12 lakh tonnes.
- Cleared every regulatory gate - the mine secured Stage-I forest approval in August 2023, environmental clearance in September 2023, permission to establish from the Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board in January 2024, and final state government approval by August 2024, after paying roughly Rs. 91 crores across land premium, net present value of diverted forest land and wildlife conservation costs.
- First coal arrived in FY25 - extraction and despatches to the Champa steel plant began on 15 February 2025, with 76,351 tonnes extracted by year-end, marking the point where the company became self-sufficient on both of steelmaking’s critical raw materials.
- Long-term linkages as a bridge - before the mine came online, the company built a coal-linkage book of over 22 lakh tonnes per annum from Coal India Limited across multiple auctions, securing fuel for both the sponge iron kilns and the captive power plant under five-year contracts.
4. Captive power: the plant that runs on its own waste
A 245 MW captive power plant sits inside the steel complex, burning waste gases and coal char from the sponge iron process to generate electricity that is consumed entirely on site - the steel plant is its only customer.
- Co-generation plus thermal - of the 245 MW total, 80 MW comes from power co-generation that harnesses waste heat from the sponge iron kilns through waste-heat recovery boilers, and 165 MW comes from the thermal route using coal and dolo char as fuel.
- By-products become boiler fuel - coal char from the sponge iron plant and dolo char are fed straight into the AFBC boilers, so material that would otherwise be waste displaces purchased coal and lowers the cost of every unit of power.
- Grid power only for peaks - when the steel melting shop’s furnaces draw peak loads, the plant tops up from the Chhattisgarh state grid, but the base load is met entirely by captive generation, insulating steel production from grid tariffs and outages.
- A small windmill on the side - a 6 MW windmill unit at Muppandal in Tamil Nadu adds a sliver of renewable power, though it is too small to be reported as a separate segment.
5. PVC pipes: a small downstream bet on construction
The company makes PVC pipes - the plastic pipes used in plumbing and agriculture - as a modest fourth revenue stream that leverages the same industrial site and logistics backbone as the steel business.
- A recent addition - the PVC pipe segment contributes roughly 4% of revenue and sits alongside the dominant steel operations, serving construction and irrigation demand from the same Chhattisgarh manufacturing base (segment mix context only, D2 p.4).
- Same plant network, different material - the pipes are produced within the company’s multi-plant footprint, which spans five locations across Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, allowing shared logistics and infrastructure with the steel operations.
Group structure and partners
The company is a standalone operator with no subsidiaries or joint ventures as of FY25, run by a promoter family that held 43.31% of the equity as of April 2023.
- No subsidiaries, no joint ventures - as of FY25 the company has no subsidiary, associate or joint venture entities; earlier joint ventures in coal mining (Fatehpur and Madanpur North) were held in prior years but are no longer part of the structure.
- Promoter holding and encumbrance - promoter shareholding stood at 43.31% in April 2023, with encumbrance on 49.87% of that promoter stake, down from over 71% in February 2023 and 61% in late 2021.
- A family-run board - the Managing Director is Shri Vikram Agarwal, the Chairman is his father Shri Ved Prakash Agarwal, and the Joint Managing Director is his brother Shri Kanha Agarwal, with a professional CFO and Company Secretary rounding out the key managerial personnel.
- Memorandum expanded for financial flexibility - in November 2024 the company added a clause to its Memorandum of Association permitting it to deal in shares, securities, derivatives and to acquire stakes in other entities, though no such activity had been undertaken as of the latest filings.