Tata Steel is the 10th largest steel producer in the world. It is one of the world’s most geographically diversified steel producers. Together with its subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures, the Company’s operations are spread across five continents with an employee base of over 65,000.
Tata Steel is a socially conscious corporate citizen, which has spent Rs. 406 Crores towards its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in FY2021-22. Through this, the company has been able to positively impact the lives of over 2.87 million people with its employees contributing over 51,000 hours of volunteering work.
Tata Steel focuses its CSR programs in areas of Education, Nutrition, Health, Livelihood, Water resource management and Women & Youth empowerment.
1. Climate Action at Tata Steel
Iron and steel have been central to human development for three thousand years. Steel is the world’s most important and cost-effective engineering and construction material. Steel remains an integral part of the solution to climate change because of its unique properties like strength to weight ratio, ductility, longevity and, most importantly, infinite recyclability. These properties make steel the material of choice for industries like construction, infrastructure, automotive, white goods, and general application. Steel is also playing an important role in the transition to clean energy with its application in solar panels, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, and EVs
As per International Energy Agency (IEA), the steel sector emits 2.6 Gt CO2 annually, which accounts for 7-9% of global sectors for GHG emissions because of hard-to-abate metallurgical coal being used as a reductant in the iron making process through the Blast Furnace. The Blast Furnace-Basic Oxygen Furnace (BF-BOF) route accounts for 70% of global steel production currently.
Tata Steel is committed towards reducing its carbon footprint in production and through the life cycle of the product. It is one of the first companies in India to have endorsed the recommendations of Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), with its Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer (ED&CFO) being a member of the Task Force. The Company is continually strengthening its production processes, supply chains, internal governance, disclosures, and policy advocacy to facilitate a transition to a low-carbon future.
2. Building a Sustainable Supply Chain
Tata Steel has a long-integrated value chain that extends from mining to finished steel products with an interconnected network of suppliers, mines, ports, manufacturing locations, stockyards, processing facilities, channel partners and customers. The Company handles planning, sourcing, delivery and logistics of ~100 MnT materials which include raw materials, finished goods and by-products. Its outbound logistics is about 60% dependent on railways and 40% on roadways at various locations. It consists of a network of warehouses and Steel Processing Centres (SPCs), ensuring timely delivery and transportation of finished products to customers. This is enabled by a network of hubs and stockyards at strategic locations across India to ensure low delivery cycles.
With increasing focus on reduction in ecological footprint and de-risking supply chain from emerging regulatory and other climate change risks, Tata steel is now focussing on a Green Supply Chain and exploring third-party logistics, modern state-of-the-art warehouses, use of energy-efficient and newer design eco-friendly ships, coastal shipping to reduce landside tonne miles and use of digital means to simplify the cargo flow of raw materials and other bought-out goods (maintenance, repair, operations, bulk, etc.) and services.
3. Tata Steel’s CSR in India
For over a century, Tata Steel has been serving the marginalised and voiceless sections of the community across more than 4,500 villages in nine districts of Jharkhand and Odisha. Tata Steel’s overarching vision to be the global steel industry benchmark for value creation and corporate citizenship is underpinned by a resolve to “work with tribal and excluded communities we serve and co-create transformative, efficient and lasting solutions to their development challenges” and thereby create “an enlightened, equitable society in which every individual realises one’s own potential with dignity”. Tata Steel’s CSR Programme aims to create deep-rooted social capital through leading societal impact in Eastern India with its own resources, extensive public and private collaborations as well as by fostering changemakers organically from within communities.
The primary agency to plan and execute Tata Steel’s CSR is the Tata Steel Foundation, which has a diverse 800+ strong force of professionals from myriad domains who have strong relationships with communities by directly working amongst them to implement various social development programmes.
Tata Steel has been standing by the most under-served communities in the country, throughout all three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating solutions and platforms that facilitated information, met material gaps, supported livelihoods, and met critical healthcare infrastructural requirements. The Company’s COVID-19 initiatives have impacted the lives of ~3 million people across 24 states of India.
Tata Steel continued its community development programmes and CSR initiatives, despite restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) continued to fully support expecting mothers as well as new-born and infants and primary healthcare services reached to the needy.
The Lockdown Learning Model devised during the pandemic to provide learning support to children continued and reached over one lakh children, leading to significant improvement in their learning outcomes.
A Foundational Learning Programme was launched to support children at the beginning of their schooling journey to cope with learning losses. SMART classes were introduced to Masti Ki Pathshalas.
Communities continued to be supported to earn their livelihoods including agricultural and allied activities, skill-based vocational training through our own institutions and other specialised sponsored courses for eligible youths and job placements as well as support to women Self Help Groups (SHGs).
Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) were also supported through capability building, linkage to entitlements and platform for celebration. Work in ethnicity continued through the Samvaad Ecosystem through work on tribal languages, art and culture, sports, traditional healing systems, cuisines, music, action-based cultural conservation research as well as a vibrant platform for conversations and celebration of their heritage by tribal communities from across India.
Communities at large also continued to be supported through basic infrastructure, water conservation and household-level nutritional gardens.
The Company strives to contribute to the future social wellbeing of its local communities through a Community Partnership Programme, ‘Future Generations’ which makes donations and organises activities focused on education, environment as well as health and well-being. The Company sponsors local activities and supports charities. The Company also co-operates a programme named ‘Telstar at home in the neighbourhood’. As part of this programme, children with learning difficulties are coached towards a healthy lifestyle.
The Company also sponsors local sports teams and children’s events which promote community spirit and brings improvement in fields of healthy eating, teamwork and behavior. The Company also engages with communities as an existing and potential workforce, running programmes to involve young people, and girls in particular, so that they can discover the interesting career opportunities that our organisation offers.
4. Tata Steel CSR Outside India
In Europe, the Company maintains close relationship with employees, customers, local residents, NGOs and educational institutions in driving community development programmes and provides guest lectures on various environmental related topics including role of steel in our society and processing method of steel. In the Netherlands, the Company is closely involved in the Technochallenge Foundation, which organises various activities for primary and secondary schools. During 2021, Promotie Evenement Techniek event in Beverwijk, Holland was attended by 67 primary schools who were introduced to recent technologies. Further, on April 21, 2021, the Company also celebrated ‘Girl’s Day’ and organized an online programme to introduce girl students to the world of science and technology.
