Steelasia’s melt shop, 1st in PHL, due 2024
STEELASIA Manufacturing Corp., the country’s largest steelmaker, will start operating the country’s first industrial-scale melt shop in 2024 using the latest green technology from Tenova.
In a statement, Steelasia said the 600,000-ton plant, located in Lemery in Batangas, will use local scrap metal to produce high-grade billets which will be raw material for building and ports construction, shipbuilding, among other projects.
Steelasia President Benjamin Yao said the melt shop will formalize and organize the collection, consolidation and recycling of scrap metal throughout the country, creating a business subsector with opportunities for individuals and small businesses like junk shops.
Aside from generating business opportunities and thousands of jobs, it will also save the country precious dollars currently used to import billets.
“This is part of the vision of Steelasia to put in place an integrated steel industry, the backbone of a country’s industrial base. Steelasia, the largest steel producer in the country, already has six operating plants and has lined up several more in a multibillion-dollar plan to keep the country abreast of its neighbors,” said Yao.
To minimize the carbon footprint of the project, Steelasia will use the latest green technology of Tenova, a global leader in steel and mining technology.
Its Consteel Evolution technology saves energy, decarbonizes steel production, and reduces environmental impacts through efficient energy recovery and pollution control innovations.
Steelasia is the flagship steel manufacturing company in the Philippines, supplying more than 80 percent of the steel bar requirements for land, air, sea, power, and communications infrastructure.
It is the preferred supplier of the Philippines’s largest contractors and property developers. Steelasia has often professe d a commitment to help in achieving a more developed and industrialized Philippines.
Currently, Steelasia has plants in Davao, Cebu, Misamis Oriental, Batangas and Bulacan.
In March 2021, Yao said the Lemery Works steel plant is of national significance as it will reduce the country’s reliance on imports for important steel products needed for the government’s “ambitious” infrastructure program.
Steelasia said in its 2021 statement that constructing the plant’s steelmaking and steel section rolling production lines were suspended in 2020 due to lockdown measures amid the pandemic. Initially, the country’s largest steelmaker said it is aiming to open for operations in Lemery, Batangas in 2023.
The company broke ground in 2019. It is set to have a capacity of 1.1. million tons per year. The plant, according to Steelasia’s 2021 statement, will produce infrastructure and heavy construction products such as H/I beam, sheet piles, heavy angles and channels.
Steelasia’s facility is seen generating at least 1,500 direct jobs and thousands more from ancillary industries and businesses, according to a statement in 2021.