As India accelerates infrastructure development across power, railways, renewables and industrial projects, advanced structural steel is emerging as a critical enabler of faster, smarter and more resilient infrastructure. In this exclusive interaction with Machine Edge Global, Shashank Agarwal, Managing Director, Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd, discusses the evolving role of structural steel, integrated design-to-EPC solutions, digital engineering, sustainability, and the key sectors set to drive demand over the next decade.
As India accelerates investments across power, railways, metro systems, renewable energy, and industrial infrastructure, how is advanced structural steel emerging as a key enabler of the country’s next phase of infrastructure development?
Structural steel has become the common backbone across almost every sector India is now building. With the Centre’s capital expenditure at around ₹11.2 lakh crore for 2025-26, and infrastructure already accounting for close to 28% of the country’s steel consumption, the scale of activity is unprecedented. Whether it is transmission corridors for renewable power, railway and metro electrification, or heavy industrial plants, the physical asset that carries the load is a steel structure, and demand is rising sharply as projects get larger and get built faster.
What has really changed is the role steel now plays. It is no longer a simple support member but a precision-engineered component that has to meet specific load, wind, seismic, and durability standards. A 765 kV transmission monopole today has to carry heavier conductors over longer spans, and a smart-city pole has to host antennas, cameras, and EV chargers on a slim profile. Both are steel, but both demand far more engineering, tighter tolerance, and better corrosion protection than a decade ago.
At Salasar, this shift is central to how we operate. With a manufacturing capacity of 2,11,000 MTPA across four integrated plants and one of Asia’s largest galvanizing facilities, our production spans everything from angle and channel sections to fully fabricated 765 kV monopoles and lattice towers, backed by in-house testing and quality certifications that meet international transmission and railway standards. We are positioned to supply this next phase where advanced structural steel is a genuine enabler of speed, quality, and long-term reliability.
With infrastructure projects becoming larger and more complex, what are the biggest engineering and execution challenges facing the sector today, and how can integrated engineering, digital technologies, and precision manufacturing help overcome them?
The biggest challenge remains timeline and cost predictability. MoSPI data shows hundreds of large central-sector projects running behind schedule, with cumulative cost overruns of over ₹5 lakh crore. Most of this traces back to a fragmented delivery model, where a slip at any single stage, whether in design, raw material, fabrication, or galvanizing, cascades through the whole project.
At Salasar, we believe the answer lies in bringing these stages under one roof. Integrated engineering lets design and fabrication work in real time, so clashes are resolved digitally before a single piece of steel is cut. Tools like STAAD.Pro and Bentley’s iTwin help us run seismic, wind, and thermal simulations upfront, which is where expensive field rework is avoided. On the shop floor, automated CNC plasma cutting and 7-axis drilling ensure structures assemble cleanly on site with minimal modification. Together, this gives complex projects the one thing they need most: control over quality and timelines.
How is the shift towards an integrated design-to-EPC approach improving project execution, reducing timelines, and enhancing quality and cost efficiencies across India’s infrastructure ecosystem?
The design-to-EPC approach removes the coordination gaps that cause most delays. In a multi-vendor contract, the client manages a web of designers, suppliers, fabricators, and site contractors, and every interface is a potential point of delay while every layer adds a margin. Industry estimates suggest an integrated model can cut execution friction by up to 40%, simply by consolidating all of this under a single point of accountability.
This is precisely the model we’ve built our own operations around – design and manufacturing moving together under one roof, so that when site conditions change, the design is revised and the fabrication updated almost immediately, rather than waiting on a separate vendor. Quality improves in the same way, because the same teams control every stage under one set of standards, which reduces on-site rework. On cost, the model lowers total cost of ownership by eliminating intermediate vendor margins and optimizing logistics between plant and site. For high-value power and railway projects, where precision and safety are non-negotiable, this combination of speed, quality, and cost efficiency becomes a decisive advantage – and it’s why integrated players are increasingly the ones winning the largest, most complex mandates in this space.
As sustainability becomes central to infrastructure development, what innovations in structural steel and engineering do you believe will play the biggest role in building resilient and future-ready infrastructure?
Sustainability in our industry starts with the material itself. Steel is fully recyclable at end-of-life without losing structural value, which is why it already holds close to 40% of India’s green building materials market. The bigger lever is using less of it: design-led engineering, backed by simulation and digital-twin technology, ensures every kilogram of steel is used efficiently, cutting both material consumption and the project’s footprint – an approach we’ve sharpened through our own technical collaboration with global engineering partners like Ramboll, bringing international design rigour to material optimization on projects.
Durability comes next. High-tensile steels and improved galvanization extend a structure’s life, which means less maintenance and replacement over decades – this is where in-house galvanizing capacity, including one of Asia’s largest facilities, lets us control coating quality and consistency at a scale few fabricators can match. Pre-fabricated, modular, bolted designs that assemble with minimal on-site welding cut time and emissions further. Alongside this, the industry is decarbonizing production itself, with the National Green Steel Mission targeting a cut in emissions intensity from 2.65 to 2.20 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel by 2029-30, and we’re embedding these principles into our own operations, working towards Zero Liquid Discharge across one of our state-of-the-art facilities. For infrastructure meant to last thirty or forty years, resilience and sustainability are really the same goal.
Looking ahead, which infrastructure sectors are expected to drive the next wave of demand for advanced structural steel, and what key trends will shape the industry’s growth over the next decade?
Power transmission will be the single largest driver. India is targeting 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030, and integrating the roughly 470 GW of renewables being added over the decade requires a near ₹9.15 lakh crore grid overhaul, with high-capacity 765 kV and HVDC corridors carrying power over long distances. The National Electricity Plan alone points to tens of thousands of circuit-km of new lines and over 32 GW of HVDC capacity by 2032, translating into sustained demand for heavy structures and monopoles.
This is exactly where we’ve recently sharpened our own positioning. Through the recent acquisition of EMC Limited, a specialist in high-voltage power transmission and distribution with over five decades of pedigree, more than 14,000 km of transmission lines executed up to 765 kV, and a place among the elite few qualified for that segment, we’ve moved beyond tower supply into full-spectrum execution, qualifying us to bid for 765 kV transmission lines, substations, and industrial power system projects that were previously out of reach. Very few players in India combine that kind of high-voltage technical pedigree with in-house manufacturing depth of over 2,11,000 MTPA, and that combination is precisely what the next wave of grid build-out will reward.
Several sectors are scaling alongside it. Data centers are a standout, with capacity projected to grow from about 1.5 GW today to 8 to 10 GW by 2030, each site needs power infrastructure and heavy steel. Railway and metro electrification, 5G-driven telecom densification, smart cities, and a resurgence in thermal power add further parallel demand, while offshore wind and green-hydrogen hubs open specialized requirements.
The key trends will be the shift to higher-voltage and compact structures, greater use of monopoles to save land, and deeper integration of design, manufacturing, and EPC. Players with this kind of manufacturing depth and integrated capability are best placed to serve this next wave, and increasingly, to export it to markets in Africa and Southeast Asia.