Photo courtesy of Presidential Communications Office.
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,” President Marcos said in his speech as he lauded the nearly six-decade-old 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
In June 2020, the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) granted a P57.7 billion project finance loan to Compostela Works, the first to be completed in the four-year pipeline of P80 billion worth of 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,” President Marcos said.
Thus, the ongoing projects include mills that will produce new products to substitute imports to promote steel security and self-reliance.
Also, the President pointed out that these projects are aligned with the recently signed Republic Act 11981, or the ‘Tatak Pinoy Law’ that aims to reduce the country’s import dependence.
Moreover, the law supports the administration’s Build Better More program, which 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 and one in Candelaria Quezon [expected] 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 ASEAN member state without its own integrated steel mill, which means that there is limited production of certain steel products as the country continues to import basic raw materials.
“The Compostela Works is but one step forward in building a more sustainable and highly linked steel industry,” Marcos said.
He called on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Energy (DOE), and other agencies and stakeholders to address the industry’s concerns about high power and logistics costs.
SteelAsia currently employs over 3,000 personnel and operates six steel plants in the country, with two mills in Meycauayan, Bulacan, and mills in Calaca in Batangas; Carcar City, Cebu; Davao City; Villanueva, Misamis Oriental; and the latest in Compostela.
Rose Dayday, a resident of Compostela and one of the employees of SteelAsia, said: “Lipay kaayo ko kay first advantage kay duol sa amoa, second are the benefits kay good man pud,” Dayday said.
(I am so happy because first, my job is near my home; second, the benefits are really good.) (JJT/PIA7)
