Tata Steel has received the World Steel Association’s (worldsteel) Safety and Health Excellence Recognition 2025 under the Process Safety Management category for its initiative titled “Preventing Loss of Containment of Hot Metal through Safety Instrumented System in Rail-based Hot Metal Transport.”
The recognition highlights worldsteel’s annual effort to honour outstanding safety and health practices among its member companies. For 2025, only five projects worldwide were chosen, covering areas such as safety culture, occupational safety, occupational health, and process safety.
Rajiv Mangal, Vice President – Safety, Health & Sustainability, Tata Steel, said, “This achievement is a testament to Tata Steel’s dedication to advancing process safety and reinforcing risk management through technology and collaboration. The award showcases our focus on innovation and the creation of safer workplaces by eliminating high-risk operational situations.”
The awarded project tackles one of the most critical safety challenges in steelmaking — preventing derailments of torpedo ladle cars that transport molten iron. Such incidents could lead to severe explosions due to the interaction between hot metal and water.
To address this, Tata Steel introduced a pioneering Safety Instrumented System across its 62-km in-plant rail network. The system integrates proximity and optical sensors with automated logic control to prevent human error during track switching — a major factor in derailments. It automatically confirms track alignment and blocks incorrect route settings, ensuring safe and consistent hot metal movement.
This marks the third consecutive year that Tata Steel has been recognised by worldsteel, making it the only Indian steelmaker to consistently earn this global honour for excellence in process safety management.
The World Steel Association (worldsteel) is one of the most influential global industry organisations, representing steel producers, regional associations, and research institutes across all major steel-producing nations. Its members account for approximately 85% of the world’s total steel output.
