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Marine Lines, Mumbai, Maharashtra

The reasons why scrap CRGO has found its way into Indian distribution transformers is also very interesting. Till the 1980s, India always used imported prime CRGO in the manufacture of transformers. However, at that time, a precarious balance of payment position and a weak rupee resulted in exorbitant landed prices of imported CRGO. This is when domestic manufacturers resorted to using imported scrap CRGO. Industry veterans recall that domestic producers also began to design their transformers in a manner that suited the use of secondary CRGO. This was still acceptable as secondary CRGO does not always mean it is unusable or inferior.The problem began taking roots when India began to be flooded with cheap and inferior imported CRGO. It became impossible for transformer manufacturers to know the quality of the imported secondary CRGO. Inadvertently, therefore, scrap CRGO began finding its way into distribution transformers even though the manufacturer did not mean to. While this “accident” still represented a small proportion of the damage, the real calamity was the willful use of scrap CRGO by unscrupulous transformer manufacturers. This is when the CRGO issue assumed menacing proportions prompting the government to intervene strongly.