TINPLATE & SITA

A hindu friend who is in tinplate trade has send this story which dates back to mid 90 s when he was just starting and had gone to England to source tinplate for his Indian customers. This friend is an extremely religious man who says his daily prayers and without fail makes four visits to various temples in a year.
He had a meeting with the Sales Manager of then British Steel ( now Corus) . After exchanging pleasantries the friend gave the sales manager the various specs of tinplate he was looking for. After seeing the specs the sales manager asked my friend " How many SITAs are you looking for ?". My friend not understanding the question just said " What ? ". The sales manager repeated his question. My friend had by now started thinking of Ramayan and how Sita could be linked to tinplate. He almost started imagining of religious slur. He just said " I 'll get back tomorrow " and walked out of the sales mamager's office. The whole of that evening was spent calling his contacts back home to find the relationship between tinplate & Sita. Unfortunately no one could help him.

The next day he told the sales manager that he was looking for 200 tonnes of tinplate. The sales manager gave him the quote and later my friend got the tinplate he wanted without knowing what " SITA " was.

For the uninitiated , tinplate world wide is sold in terms of area and SITA is an acronym for System International Tinplate Area. SITA denotes a area of 100 sq mts.
This friend now is fully aware of relationship between tinplate and SITA. He now gets all his quotes in Sita terms and then converts it to tonnes for his Indian customers.

Bright Finish Tinplate

This fact was sent to me by a very knowledgable user of tinplate. I have known this person both as a customer and someone you could rely on for accurate market information. For his varied product range he uses different kinds of steel like CRCA , GP , tinplate , stainless steel etc.

In India most end users of tinplate believe that for any tinplate to be classified as Prime Tinplate it has to have bright finish. This mis conception has its roots in what was being offered by domestic manufacturers in the past. The domestic manufacturers only offered bright finish tinplate. If it had any matte finish it was downgraded to waste-waste and sold as such. So if you bought waste-waste you were sure to get matte finish tinplate. Hence it became established fact that any finish other than bright finish was not prime material.

Another misconception my learned friend has shared with me is in stainless steel category.

Most of us believe that for steel to be called stainless steel it has to be non-magnetic. The truth is quite different. Stainless steel can be both magnetic or non-magnetic. Non-magnetic stainless steel is costlier ( because of nickel content) . Kitchen Utensils can be easily made out of magnetic stainless steel but an Indian consumer invariably tests the stainless steel utensil he / she buys using a magnet. No wonder stainless steel utensils are costlier than what it would be if this mis conception is corrected.