What SAIL SeQR is

SAIL launched SeQR in May 2019, when the first bars came off a new mill at its Burnpur plant in West Bengal. The steel behind it is made by the primary route: iron ore from SAIL's own mines goes into the furnace, so the bar is rolled from fresh steel and never from melted scrap. SAIL then refines the liquid steel to pull the sulphur and phosphorus down below what the standard allows. Those two matter to a house: too much phosphorus makes a bar brittle in cold weather, and too much sulphur weakens it when it heats up, as in a fire.

The rib pattern is cut by machined rings, so the ribs come out even along the bar, and even ribs grip concrete better. None of this shows at the counter. What shows is a clean, straight 12 metre rod with SAIL's name rolled into it.

Every TMT bar has two numbers pulled out of it on a test bench: the pull at which it starts to stretch, called yield, and the bigger pull at which it finally breaks. The gap between the two is the bar's margin of safety. In a sudden shock, an earthquake being the plain example, a bar with a wide gap stretches, absorbs the jolt and goes on holding the roof; a bar with a narrow gap lets go. SAIL builds SeQR for a wide gap: its brochure gives a typical ratio of 1.15 between the two pulls for its Fe 550D bar, against the 1.08 minimum IS 1786 asks of that grade.

The same brochure promises easier bending: SeQR bars fold around a tighter former than the standard demands of a D grade bar, which the mistri feels when he is bending rings and stirrups all afternoon. Bihar sits in earthquake zones the maps take seriously, so a bar built to take a jolt is not a city luxury here.

Two grades: Fe 500D and Fe 550D. The number is the strength, the pull per square millimetre at which the bar yields, and the D says ductile, a bar made to stretch further before breaking than a plain grade of the same number. Six sizes: 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 and 25 mm, every one a 12.0 metre bar. SAIL prints a weight beside each, 0.395 kg a metre at 8 mm up to 3.85 kg a metre at 25 mm, the same figures the sariya weight chart arrives at from the standard itself.

That is the whole published range. There is no SeQR thinner than 8 mm and none fatter than 25, so the 6 mm for rings comes from another brand on the rack. Not every SeQR size is standing in the godown on a given day either; say the size and the grade on the call and we confirm what is in before the order is fixed.

SAIL's plants also roll TMT that never sees a dealer's rack. Its plant catalogue lists grades whose names read Fe 500D EQR and Fe 550D EQR, the letters short for earthquake resistant, alongside Fe 600 and other grades, in a longer run of sizes than the SeQR table. That line sells through SAIL's own branch sales offices and stockyards, mostly to projects buying by the hundreds of tonnes.

SeQR is the same company's steel pointed at the opposite buyer: a published home builder range, a dealer network, and bundle quantities a tempo can carry. If a drawing or a tender asks for a SAIL grade or size outside SeQR's two grades and six sizes, that is a plant line question, so say it on the call and we tell you what can be arranged. What paper a tendered job needs is its own subject, and the tender documents guide covers it.

SAIL sells SeQR through dealers and distributors, and Jay Shree Infra is a SAIL dealer on Meera Talkies Road. The bundles come into our godown in 12 metre lengths with their tags on and their certificate with them, and go out in our own vehicles to all 34 blocks of Saharsa, Supaul and Madhepura. Reading that tag and that certificate before the strap is cut is worth thirty seconds, and how to identify genuine ISI marked TMT walks the whole check for any brand.

Ordering takes one call: the size, the grade, the quantity, and the village if it is going out. Whether SeQR or another name fits your job better is the branded versus local TMT question, and it sits with this one on our buying guides list.