THE country’s leading steel manufacturer is planning to put up five new plants over the next four years to reduce the country’s need for imports.
The initiative will cost P82 billion, broken down into P18 billion for a plant in Lemery, Batangas; P30 billion for another facility in Candelaria, Quezon; P8 billion for one in Davao City; and two plants in Concepcion, Tarlac, worth P26 billion.
The Tarlac plants are expected to be completed in 2027, while the rest are targeted to be finished in 2026.
“We are building the mother industry for manufacturing. We are way behind our neighbors, but we will catch up,” SteelAsia Chairman and CEO Benjamin Yao said in a statement on Wednesday.
“[A]s we do so, our mills and steel products will create new manufacturing industries that will result in more jobs and higher-skilled workers, and economic growth, among others,” he added.
Yao also said that the new plants would help achieve self-sufficiency, noting that the country spent more than $3 billion in 2022 to import steel products like wire rods, billets, sections and sheet piles.
The upcoming projects were said to have been presented to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. when he inaugurated SteelAsia’s P10-billion plant in Compostela, Cebu, earlier this month.
The new facilities will join SteelAsia’s existing plants in Batangas, Bulacan, Davao and Cebu.
Yao said the firm had a deliberate geographic strategy to cut transport costs and sell to customers at the same price across the country.
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