Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, July 27, 2015 : Tapan Kumar Chand has taken over as the full-time chairman and managing director [CMD] of Navratna PSU, National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO), on Monday. Earlier Chand was the Director (Commercial) of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL).

Chand brings along more than three decades of rich experience in mining and metal sector, including eight at Board level. A Gold Medalist from Utkal University, Chand had undergone training in Advanced Management Programme in International Centre for Promotion of Enterprises (ICPE), in Western Europe and in Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He represented Indian Steel Industry in Paris Meet of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In the areas of corporate governance, he was adjudged as the outstanding performer by SCOPE and department of public enterprises. He also served as director in Central Coal, a Company of Coal India and then director in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, a Navratna Company of the union government.

After assuming charge of the CMD, Chand assured that he would make all efforts to pave way for Team Nalco to surge upwards and scale greater heights of glory. Besides, value-based and system-driven management, he emphasized on a strong business sense at all levels to make NALCO products cost competitive in international market, diversification to top-up turnover, safety as a culture, empathetic welfare of employees and community around.

Talking on the current business environment, the new CMD informed that both domestic and global markets are undergoing sluggishness and it is a difficult period for metal industries. Metal makers, be it ferrous and non-ferrous, need to focus on volume variance and price variance, to augment their realization, he remarked.

New market, expansion of customer base, product diversification and high-end products are some of the initiatives need to be taken immediately to make Nalco tide over the existing market blizzard, he said adding that his top priority is Nalco’s expansion and diversification on top priority, along with existing asset utilization and cost reduction.