CEBU CITY, Cebu (PIA) — President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. led the inauguration of the country’s largest, newest, and most modern steel mill located in Compostela, Cebu on July 9, 2024.
“Today we mark an important milestone in our goal of building and reviving our steel industry as we inaugurate SteelAsia’s Compostela Works. Once the Compostela Works becomes fully operational, it will have an annual production capacity of one million tons of rebar, making it the country’s largest steel plant,” Pres. Marcos said in his speech as he lauded the nearly six-decade steel industry player in the country.
Compostela Works is the latest steel mill of SteelAsia Manufacturing Corporation, a 59-year old wholly Philippine-owned company that manufactures reinforcing steel for construction or rebar.
With a capacity of 1 million tons per year, the Compostela facility is also among the most modern in the world, engineered and supplied by world leaders in steel manufacturing technologies, Danieli of Italy and Fives of France.
It will provide the much-needed rebar requirements for infrastructure, including bridges, roads, air/seaports, flood control, and other critical and large-scale building works in the Visayas and Mindanao regions.
It will also address residential construction, particularly in view of housing backlogs.
Four-year pipeline of projects
The Compostela Works was funded by a P5.7 billion Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) Project Finance Loan in June 2020.
This is the first to be completed In the four-year pipeline of P80 billion worth projects to build a Philippine steel industry.
“This is just one of SteelAsia’s projects over the next three years, aimed at developing a strong Philippine steel industry that no longer relies on importation to meet our steel requirements,” Pres. Marcos said.
The ongoing projects include mills that will produce new products to substitute imports to promote steel security and self-reliance.
The President said these projects are also aligned with the recently signed Republic Act 11981 or the ‘Tatak Pinoy Law,’ which aims to reduce the country’s import dependence.
It also supports the administration’s ‘Build Better More’ Program that seeks to spur industrial growth and infrastructure development.
“Our future projects are all about import substitution. We will put up two section mills, one in Lemery Batangas, one in Candelaria Quezon, to produce 1.3 million tons of I-beams, sheet piles, and large angle bars, used for transmission towers and cell phone towers,” said SteelAsia President and Chief Operating Officer Sean Andre Y. Sy.
Pres. Marcos said the country is currently the only member state in ASEAN without its own integrated steel mill, which means that there is a limited production of certain steel products as the country still imports basic raw materials.
“The Compostela Works is but one step forward in building a more sustainable and highly-linked steel industry,” Marcos said.
The President called on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Energy (DOE), and other agencies and stakeholders to resolve the industry’s concerns about high power and logistics cost.
SteelAsia currently employs over 3,000 personnel and operates six steel plants in the country, with two mills in Meycauayan in Bulacan, and mills in Calaca in Batangas, Carcar City in Cebu, Davao City, Villanueva in Misamis Oriental, and the latest in Compostela.
Rose Dayday, a resident of Compostela and one of the employees of SteelAsia, is thankful that she found employment near her home and the benefits are also good.
“Lipay kaayo ko kay first advantage kay duol sa amoa, second is the benefits kay good man pud,” Dayday said.
(I am so happy because the first advantage for me is that it is near my home, second is the benefits are really good.)(JJT/PIA7)
