Steel manufacturers: Chinese firm to help set up billet mill

New plant to have total production capacity of 300,000 tons per year.

KARACHI:

Karachi-based Abbas Steel Group has signed up with China’s Sinosteel Corporation to supply machinery and equipment to put up a billet mill to provide raw material for the group’s rerolling industry of wire rod and rebar mill complex.

It will help to secure more reliable and cost effective source of semi-finished steel for internal use in their existing three mills, an industry source told MESteel (mesteel.com). The new plant, due to start trial production by end of this year or beginning 2012, will have a total production capacity of 300,000 tons per year when two construction phases are completed.

Abbas Steel Group has three existing mills which have an installed capacity to produce 150,000 tons of rebar per year and 100,000 tons of wire rods, in addition to smaller quantities of steel shafts used mainly in automobile manufacturing industry and wire rod for downstream engineering industry in Pakistan.

Pakistan produces about 3.5 million tons annually of billets and other semi-finished steel out of a five million ton production capacity – or 70% of capacity level. Price difference between quality billet and ship plate is around Rs5,000-7,000 per ton. This type of steel material is in demand among price-conscious consumers in Pakistan. PPI 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2011.