How to get today's SAIL TMT rate

The heading on SAIL's notice reads MRRP, which is Maximum Retail Reference Price: the mill's own reference figure for its bar, put out under its own name. Beside the month the title carries a date marked wef, with effect from, meaning the figure applies from that date and not from the first of the month. December 2022's notice and January 2023's revised one are both still readable on SAIL's site, and the January one took effect twenty six days into its month.

Two things follow for a buyer in Saharsa. The date on the notice matters as much as the figure under it, because a revision can land mid month with no warning. And a reference price is what the word says, a reference: it is the mill's own benchmark, not the bill a shop in any particular town writes against a bundle on a particular day.

A SAIL bundle reaching a slab in Sonbarsha has travelled a long way past that notice. Freight to this godown, the vehicle your road needs, whether the line is going by the piece or by weight that day, and the morning itself all sit between the mill's figure and yours. Asking in a way that gets a usable answer, for any material on this rack, is the whole of the today's rates page, and it holds for SAIL sariya exactly as it holds for a bag of cement.

So the search bar answers the wrong question. It can tell you what SAIL's reference stood at on some date. It cannot tell you what 12 mm Fe 500D costs in Saharsa this morning, loaded and moving, and that second number is the only one an estimate can be built on.

SAIL publishes its SeQR home builder bars in 8, 10, 12, 16, 20 and 25 mm at a 12 metre length, specified against IS 1786 in Fe 500D and Fe 550D, where the D means the bar is held to tighter limits on what goes into the steel and must stretch further before it breaks. So the sariya question that gets a full answer names four things: the diameter, the grade as the drawing writes it, the quantity, and the village the load has to reach.

Add a fifth if the job is tendered: say so, and say whether a test certificate has to travel with the material, because that is settled before the vehicle is booked and not after. Not every diameter is standing in every brand on a given day, so the same call confirms what SAIL is actually on the floor before any figure is spoken.

What comes back is one figure against one line: your diameter, your grade, on the basis that line is selling that day, with the carriage for your route said out beside it rather than folded in. Take it as good for the call it came on. A big order loading two days later is worth one more call the same morning the vehicle goes.

That is the whole method. SAIL's own paper tells you the mill has a cycle; the counter tells you where that cycle has landed in Saharsa today. The first is worth reading, the second is the one you buy at.