New Carcar to build 3 steel billet plants in Philippines

MANILA (Scrap Monster): New Carcar Manufacturing Corp., majority stakes owned by the Yao Group of Steel Asia Manufacturing Corp. of Philippines, will invest P10.57 billion for the establishment of three steel billet production facilities in Carcar Cebu in the Visayas, La Union in Luzon, and Davao del Norte in Mindanao.

This is as part of the company's strategic move to take advantage of the current construction boom in the country by making steel products available to their clients nationwide at their convenience and at cheaper cost.

The Board of Investments has already approved the project with tax and fiscal incentives as this activity is listed in the current Investment Priorities Plan of the government. The new still billet plants would utilize scrap metals from SteelAsia. The agreement is covered under a memorandum of agreement between the two companies.

Each plant has a project cost of P3.523 billion or a combined cost of P10.57 billion for the three projects, each plant has also the same production capacity of 400,000 metric tons or a combined registered capacity of 1.2 MMT per year, all to be supplied to the local market.

These plants will have simultaneous start of commercial operation in January 2014 with 513 workers.

This makes the Yao Group the biggest steel billet producer in the country with plants strategically located in three regions. In case, one plant bogs down the other plant can fill up the slack.

At present, Steel Asia is using imported steel billets to produce rebars.