The fabrication of reinforcing steels into shapes suitable for fixing into concrete formwork, is normally performed in advanced countries by specialist reinforcement fabrication centres. In these advanced countries very little reinforcement is cut and bent on-site. In India, the reinforcement bar fabrication is predominantly done at site by employing huge labour force and semi-automatic machines. Although the cutting and bending of steel reinforcement appears relatively straightforward, the steel reinforcement fabrication service centres are well equipped to do so in a consistently accurate manner. The service centres works under defined set of quality management criteria to ensure the accuracy of cutting and bending operations in order to achieve proper fit at site, and to maintain the required technical parameters defined by the clients.

For the very first time Tata Steel Processing and Distribution Limited introduced the concept of off-site rebar processing centre in India and this initiative came as a boon for the Indian construction industry in the National Capital Region. Today large construction houses engaged in building infrastructure, real estates, railways have placed their trust on Tata Steel Processing and Distribution Limited as their most preferred supplier.

The basic fabrication processes consist of cutting and bending the reinforcement steel. The actual process employed depends on the material being processed, whether bar or coil. At the Tata Steel Processing and Distribution Limited reinforcement bar processing centre the bars are fabricated by cutting on shear lines, and thereafter bending on power bending machines. The processing ranges of these machines are from 16 mm diameter to 60 mm diameter. The reinforcement bar, in coil form, is obtained from the mills in Coil form in the size range of 6mm to 12mm and is bent to stirrups and most complicated shapes through the Automatic Link Bending machine. The top-of-the-line fabrication equipments have been sourced from Denmark and Korea for Tata Steel Processing and Distribution Limited to promise the delivery of dimensionally accurate stirrups and complex shapes just in time (JIT delivery).

The construction Industry is increasingly seeing the benefits of:

• Accurate planning of the site programme
• Answer to severe skill and labour shortage
• Weather-independent construction
• Reduced construction time, thereby avoiding time and cost overrun
• Efficient use of limited space at congested sites
• Improved safety
• High accuracy on specified tolerances thereby avoiding rework at site
• Minimum wastage
• Dependency avoidance on power availability and power saving at site
• No investment in machinery for fabricating the reinforcement
• On time delivery every time