Global steel major Tata Steel is scaling up artificial intelligence, connected workforce systems and remote operations to make industrial safety more predictive, with the company already using more than 10,000 CCTV cameras and AI-enabled surveillance to identify unsafe behaviour and intervene before accidents occur. According to reports from PTI, Rajiv Mangal, Vice President, Safety, Health and Sustainability, Tata Steel, stated that the company wants to shift workplace safety from post-incident investigation to real-time accident prevention. Over the past 15 years, Tata Steel has achieved a 38 per cent reduction in its lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) across the group.
The company is deploying its Connected Workforce platform across operations and expanding Integrated Remote Operation Centres (iRoCs) to enable hazardous operations to be monitored and controlled remotely. As reported by PTI, AI-enabled gate passes and beacons installed inside plants track personnel movement and automatically flag deviations, helping ensure workers enter only authorised and safe areas. CCTV feeds, plant and machinery data and other critical information are brought together on large screens, reducing workers' exposure to hazardous environments and improving coordination during emergencies.
According to Mangal's statements to PTI, Tata Steel is deploying AI in logistics safety with 8,000-10,000 trucks and trailers entering plants daily, using driver-fatigue monitoring systems and technology to prevent trucks from contacting overhead cables. The company's digital safety systems include real-time hazard detection, IoT monitoring, predictive asset-health analysis, drones, smart surveillance and GenAI-enabled safety observation systems. Tata Steel expects AI-powered hazard prediction, computer vision, digital twins, autonomous inspections, wearables and connected-worker technologies to become central to industrial safety by 2035.
In the June quarter, Tata Steel reported a 19 per cent year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit to ₹2,385.24 crore on account of growth in revenues from India operations. As reported by PTI, the company's total income rose to ₹61,026.97 crore in Q1 FY27 from ₹53,466.79 crore in the same quarter a year ago. However, the company spent ₹802.17 crore on environment, safety and compliance projects in FY2025-26, compared with ₹1,036.25 crore in FY2024-25. The company estimates its existing Indian sites have land to support capacity of up to 40 million tonnes.
On decarbonisation, Mangal stated that Tata Steel remains committed to Net Zero emissions by 2045 and is pursuing electric arc furnaces, renewable energy, biochar, HIsarna, EASyMelt and green-hydrogen technologies. According to PTI reports, the company has conducted a large-scale hydrogen injection trial in a blast furnace and found the technology technically feasible, but commercial deployment remains constrained by cost and availability. Hydrogen prices would need to fall to around USD 1.5-2 per kg from current levels of roughly USD 4 to 6 per kg for large-scale steelmaking applications to become viable.
