SteelAsia manufacturing plant on track to start this year

SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp. said its steel beams production plant in Batangas province, the country’s first, would start operations in 2021 and create at least 1,500 direct jobs.

It will manufacture products used in infrastructure and heavy construction such as sheet piles, heavy angles and channels—all of which are currently being imported, SteelAsia said in a recent statement.

“The Lemery Works steel plant is of national significance as it will reduce our reliance on imports for important steel products needed for the government’s ambitious infrastructure program,” said SteelAsia president Benjamin Yao.

Construction of the two production lines—steelmaking and steel section rolling—was suspended due to the COVID-19 lockdown. It broke ground in 2019.

At least 1,500 jobs

The facility will create at least 1,500 direct jobs and thousands more from ancillary industries and businesses and have a capacity of some 1.1 million tons a year.

The world’s leading manufacturer of sections equipment, SMS of Germany, and one of the pioneers in reheating furnaces, Fives (formerly Stein Huertey of France), provided the design and supplied the equipment for the manufacturing plant.

The plant will recycle steel scrap, which is currently exported. SteelAsia said this would also put Batangas on the map as one of the country’s top steel hubs.

“When you export and process our resources abroad, it is creating jobs in another country. With this new plant, we will recycle our steel scrap here and generate local jobs,” Yao said.

SteelAsia said it was on a mission to create regional industrial hubs and at the same time make steel products easily accessible and therefore more affordable to all parts of the country.

So far, it has plants in Davao, Cebu, Misamis Oriental, Batangas and Bulacan province. It is also putting up plants in Compostela Cebu, Tarlac and Quezon province. inq