Meera Deshpande given group decarbonisation brief at Kalinga Steelworks

Kalinga Steelworks has given Meera Deshpande responsibility for group decarbonisation alongside her role as president of long products, effective 18 June 2026. Her division has roughly six million tonnes of annual capacity serving construction and infrastructure customers.

The appointment places the transition portfolio with the part of the company most exposed to its cost. Deshpande has been publicly direct that Indian long-products producers cannot fund electric-arc conversion out of current margins, and has criticised the sector for describing this as a challenge rather than stating it as a fact.

She has spent twenty-two years at the company, beginning as a graduate engineer in the rolling mill at Angul, and has held commercial rather than technical roles since 2011.