The Japanese company Nippon Steel Corp has begun discussing a business alliance with India's Tata Steel to produce steel products for vehicles made in India.
The two firms would jointly supply steel to Japanese automakers with production bases in India, including Suzuki Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp.
Japan's largest steelmaker and India's largest private manufacturer have cooperated in technical aspects in steel-sheet production for automobiles since 2002.
The joint venture was expected to meet the growing demand of steel sheet for the Japanese automobile industry in India as the automakers' plan to shift from importing to local procurement of high-grade steel.
Tata, which agreed in January to acquire the Anglo-Dutch steel giant Corus Group, also formed a technical alliance on steel sheet for vehicles in 2002 with Arcelor SA of Luxembourg. Four years later, Arcelor merged with Mittal Steel to form Arcelor-Mittal, the world's largest steelmaker.