STEELASIA Manufacturing broke ground this week for its Compostela Works Rolling Mill, with company officials bullish about the administration’s ambitious infrastructure-building program.
“We’re proud to do our part in building our nation. It’s time we catch up with our neighboring countries,” said SteelAsia Chairman and CEO Benjamin Yao, referring to the Build, Build, Build program of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and how it will drive up demand for its products.
SteelAsia has been in the steel-making industry for 52 years. With a capacity to produce 800,000 tons of rebar annually, the Compostela facility is perched on a 23-hectare property in Barangay Poblacion.
The P8-billion investment is also SteelAsia’s biggest facility so far and will be one of the largest and most modern rebar mills in Southeast Asia once it is completed, the company said.
SteelAsia is set to employ around 3,000 people, 80 percent of whom will be hired directly from the community, for its new mill.
SteelAsia chose Compostela as the site of the new mill for its strategic location.
“Logistically, it is near the port. And since we already have a mill in the south (in the City of Carcar), we think it’s good to have a mill up north as well,” said Yao.
In the next five years, SteelAsia hopes to expand its product lines and make other steel products locally such as I-beams, H-beams, wire mesh and ship piles.
Currently, SteelAsia has six mills in the country: two in Bulacan, one in Batangas, one in Carcar, one in Cagayan de Oro, and one in Davao. The Compostela mill will be the seventh. Plans for new mills in areas such as Tarlac are already in the pipeline.
The Compostela Works Rolling Mill is slated for completion in the third to fourth quarter of 2019. (CBQ)