The 30-year-old scion and successor to Aditya Birla's legacy joined the premier board with effect from November 19.

Tata Steel informed the Bombay Stock Exchange about the same through a notice on Thursday. Birla is the youngest director to take up a position on the august board.

The steel giant also informed the stock exchange that LP Singh, a director on the company's board, passed away recently in October.

The giant steel corporation also announced that at its meeting held on Thursday, the company's board of directors has, in principle, approved of a proposal to purchase the cold rolling mill unit of Tata SSL Ltd at Tarapur, subject to necessary approvals.

The Tata SSL board also met during the day and said that "after evaluating various options", it agreed in principle to the sale of the mill.

Tata SSLwas incorporated as Special Steels Ltd, which was taken over by the Tatas, and following a merger with another group company, Tata Metals and Strips, in 1995, was renamed as Tata SSL. It appears now that through this purchase, Tata Steel is set to significantly augment its capacity to produce specialised steel products.

Tata SSL has emerged as the largest Indian manufacturer of steel wires in the organised sector. It manufactures high carbon steel wires, steel wire rods, mild and special steel billets as well as ingots.

The steel wires unit at Tarapur can make 96,000 tonnes per annum of steel wires. The unit started production in 1976, its wire rod mill went on stream in 1982, and has been awarded the ISO-9002 quality certificate.

Over the last year, the company, chaired by Tisco finance director Ishaat Hussain, recorded higher capacity utilisation, but falling prices and margins in flat products and in the steel and wires division due to the ongoing recession prevented the company from breakingeven.