October 16, 2008

TATA Steel and Corus integrating R&D

FE reported that TATA Steel and Corus, which revved up their integration plan, have already started discovering the benefits in several areas of research and steel making. TATA Steel has separate research and development and technology groups whereas Corus has a combined research, development and technology team.

Apart from the 15 research and development projects, there are several harvesting projects, which could be exploited commercially by either side at a short notice. Around 50% of the projects being exchanged by the two sides are said to be harvesting projects, where each side puts the other's intellectual property rights directly into use for production.

Mr T Venugopalan CTO of TATA Steel said that “Corus has done something, we pick up from there. We have also passed on all our developments, including intellectual property rights and patents for whatever projects we have done in recent times to them. So, they would also be making use of them.”