Resilience Amid Covid-19: Lessons from Accurate Steel Mills

The steel industry continues to fight for a stabilisation of pricing within an uncertain market. During the past few months, we have seen:

• An exchange rate shoot to almost 109 Kenya Shillings/US Dollar. This remains very significant given that all raw materials are imported and all bills are, therefore, US dollar denominated.

•  A severe shortage in raw materials caused either by exporters unable to find vessels to ship raw materials or countries retracting their export licenses from companies to focus on steel being redirected to support the local economies.

This is a very different experience from anything ever seen in the past, and it is likely that the impact of Covid-19 will continue to be felt going into 2021. As this becomes our new ‘normal’, we must find a way for projects and work to proceed, and Accurate Steel Mills remains your partner in this process. With the latest measures of curfews, we have managed to ramp up production to near pre-Covid levels and are well stocked with all raw materials. Our doors remain open to business and we have seen a huge surge in new customer relationships that we are eager to support. 

We have taken this opportunity to make a number of internal changes within our processing to become more environmentally conservative and efficient in our production. Amongst a whole host of factory improvements, we have:

1.  Upgraded our pollution control mechanism at our furnace operations to European standards. Our previous standards had already complied with the PPI requirements of the environmental agencies, but we used the opportunity to upgrade further because we aren’t satisfied with just complying. We always go the extra mile.

2.   Increase in product offerings from new installations. We are increasing our product range and beginning testing on a number of new products, from sections to channels.

3.  We are increasing the capacity of our current hollow section production mills through new installations and greater efficiency mills.

All of these improvements (and many other in the pipeline) make us very confident that we can continue to be your primary partners in all of your building requirements. – Avraj Bhachu