Posted on 07 Sep 2015
Steel Asia Corp., the country’s largest steel manufacturer with P19 billion already in sunk in investments, is planning its 10th facility with investment of up to P5 billion.
Rafael Hidalgo, chief operating officer of Steel Asia, told reporters after his presentation at the Board of Investment Roadshow at the Heritage Hotel, that the planned new plant will be located somewhere in south Luzon to be operational in 2019.
It will have a production capacity of 500,000 metric tons of specialized reinforcing steel bars (rebars) with estimated investments of between P4 billion to P5 billion.
This will be its 10th steel rebar facility in the country once the three ongoing projects come on stream in 2016, 2017 and 2018 located in Plaridel, Bulacan, Carmen, Cebu and Calaca, Batangas, respectively.
These plants will bring the company’s total production capacity to 4 million metric tons from a total of nine plants by 2018.
At present, SteelAsia has 6 operating plants with production capacity of 2.6 million tons.
The six operating rebar plants are located in Meycauayan, Bulacan where it has two facilities; Calaca, Batangas; Carcar, Cebu, Phividec in Misamis Oriental and in Davao City.
For all the nine plants, the company has invested a staggering P19 billion total making its operations one of the most modern steel plants in Asia.
Hidalgo said the aggressive expansion program is in keeping with the robust growth of the steel industry which is expected to grow more than 20 percent this year.
“Because of growth, we need to play catch up. We anticipate that in the next two to three years we will need this mill, or else there would be a shortage,” Hidalgo said.
According to Hidalgo, the entire domestic steel demand in the country is placed at 7 million MT of which the rebars account for 4 million MT, 50 to 60 percent of which are supplied by of Steel Asia.
