Emirates Steel Industries announced that it has commenced the commissioning of its new steelmaking plant in Mussafah.
Construction of the country's first integrated steelmaking operation continues to advance with the commissioning of a world-scale plant that will produce steel billets, the raw material for ES's new state of the-art rolling mills. This latest plant includes an electric arc furnace and a caster to mould the billets from the furnace's molten steel.
HE Hussain Al Nowais chairman of ESI announced that ESI is steadily delivering on its vision to become a steel company with a production capacity of five million tons per annum. He said that "ESI is pioneering the way for the steel industry in the UAE and will achieve this vision through a series of expansion projects. This new steelmaking plant, with an estimated investment of AED 802 million, is a significant component of our overall backward integration plan and gives us a competitive advantage over many major steel players in the region.” He added that "Once commercial production begins in May, the production of steel billets will displace much of ESI's imported billets and also lower production costs by a significant amount.”
Mr Ahmed Al Dhaheri ESI's VP projects, explained that the production capacity of the steelmaking plant will be 1.4 million tonnes per annum. He said that "ESI will have the capability to produce billets of different qualities and grades and the flexibility to serve a wide range of customers with finished goods tailored to their needs.” Last year, ESI signed AED 2.5 billion deal with Italy's Danieli & Company to execute a second vertically integrated phase of its expansion, which will increase the operation's steel production capacity to three million tons per annum by 2011.
The final link in the production chain will be commissioned later this year, with a plant that converts imported iron ore pellets into raw iron for the new steelmaking plant. The import facilities for the pellets became operational in February of this year. Emirates Steel Industries, formerly known as Emirates Iron and Steel Factory, is wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. The ESI factory is the largest integrated steel plant in the UAE, utilizing the latest rolling mill technology to produce reinforcing bars, coil and wire rod for the construction industry. Established in 1998 and commencing production in 2001 to satisfy the growing demand for quality steel products for the UAE's fast developing construction sector, ESIis the only significant domestic supplier of rebar, with a production capacity of 2 million tonnes of rebar and wire rod.
