Abstract

Lakshmi Mittal, owner of a steel mill in Indonesia, is keen on expanding his operations. He has decided to look towards the west, where governments are selling off state-owned steel plants at sharp discounts. Mittal identifies an opportunity in Trinidad in the Caribbean where a steel plant is losing $1 million a day. Ispat makes substantial investments towards capital and environmental upgradation and brings in his team comprising mostly of Indians. Ispat spends $10 million on the equipment needed to unblock bottlenecks. Three months later production doubles and, within a year, the plant becomes profitable. Even as Ispat addresses past environmental problems and invests more money to upgrade plant facilities, officials of the local steelworkers union criticise Caribbean Ispat Ltd's (CIL) safety policies and the alleged 'slow pace of indigenisation of upper management'. The case discusses Mittal's attempts to turn around CIL.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

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Keywords

Caribbean, Iscott, Ispat, Mittal, Turnaround, Labour problems, Capacity utilization, Steel, DRI, direct reduced iron, Lease, Acquire, Trinidad and Tobago