Amreli Steels with Primetals Technologies for mega expansion

KARACHI: Amreli Steels Limited has signed a contract with giant international conglomerate Primetals Technologies to build the country’s largest steel bar manufacturing facility with a capacity of 300,000 tons per year, a statement said on Tuesday.
After the expansion, Amreli’s total steel bar capacity will be at half a million tons per year. Primetals is a joint venture between Siemens, VAI, Mitsubishi that provides steel manufacturing solutions across the value chain; right from raw materials to finished products.
Amreli Steels expansion is being engineered and executed by the Primetals Technologies Long Products division in Milan, Italy that has a record number of 500 installed plants worldwide.
“We selected Primetals because they are able to provide the kind of cutting edge technology to obtain unparalleled cost and quality benchmarks that will translate into a better bottom line.
This investment is in line with our mission of providing the best quality steel products, while maintaining cost leadership in the industry,” mentioned Shayan Akberali, Managing Director at Amreli Steels Limited.
The company hopes to drastically reduce energy consumption and wastage in manufacturing steel bars by adopting this pioneering new technology in Pakistan.
“Primetals is very excited about partnering with Amreli Steels for our first project in Pakistan.
We are providing a state of the art plant that is comparable in standards to any steel bar facility in the world, and we believe Amreli’s management has the capability and experience to run this plant very efficiently,” remarked Sergio Galimberti, Senior Sales Manager at Primetals Technologies.
The expansion comes at a time when the industry outlook is very robust and steel demand for construction is at record levels as demonstrated by the 36 percent growth in the iron and steel sector in FY15.
“Many large infrastructure, housing and commercial projects have been announced and some have already started construction.
These projects are going to be constructed over the next 5-10 years and we want to ensure Amreli captures the maximum share of the growing demand by investing in capacity expansion,” mentioned Shayan.
Amreli Steels is financing the project through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that is scheduled sometime in August.
“Amreli is looking to implement the new plant at a discounted project cost of only Rs3.0 billion because the company has already invested in creating the plant’s infrastructure over the past few years,” stated Akberali.
According to Amreli’s representatives, preliminary civil works have already started on site and engineering works have also kick started. The company hopes to start commissioning the plant in December 2016.