KARACHI: outh Korean government and business community have explored Pakistan as potential economic hub, willing to invest in different sectors, particularly steel, which offers huge growth opportunities spurred by government’s investment-friendly policies.
This was stated by the Ambassador of South Korea, H.E. Jong Hwan Song, during his visit to Tuwairqi Steel Mills Limited (TSML) today.
Terming steel as vital for economic development of any country, he said that TSML is an industrial icon strengthening the bond between South Korea and Pakistan. “South Korean steel giant POSCO is already an equity partner with Al-Tuwairqi in this project and contemplating to invest more for the backward and forward integration in this initial effort of the DRI plant. While interacting with the highly professional, dedicated and committed team of TSML, he opined that there is a dire need of an outright support from the government of Pakistan to address the commercial issues TSML currently is contended with. Moreover to encourage POSCO and Al-Tuwairqi both to invest further in the backward and forward integration of the ongoing project.
He specially lauded the extraordinary efforts of the technical team of TSML which only within 120 days of trial production had been able to test run the plant at 100% of its rated capacity in May 2013, under the supervision of the OEM experts. Ambassador after seeing the certificate issued by the OEM congratulated the team for meeting all the required parameters of the OEM’s specifications and achieving quality of the product par excellence.
Young-Ho Yoo, the Resident Director of POSCO said, “It is heartening to observe that TSML has already increased the iron making capacity of Pakistan by 1.28 million tons per annum, which would help meet the ever growing demands of steel in Pakistan and with its massive expansion and modernization plans, TSML is poised to transform the country into an industrial hub. “With the successful completion of the first phase earlier this year, now we are looking forward to examine the feasibility for the second and third phase of the project, as its forward and backward integration,” he remarked.
Earlier, Zaigham Adil Rizvi, Country Head / Director (Projects), TSML gave a detailed presentation about the project and shared statistics about the global steel industry vis-a-vis the current status of steel sector in Pakistan. “There is a consistent growth in the production of DRI over the years, owing to environment-friendly production process and consistent quality of the product,” he said. He was of the view that currently, Pakistan was among the countries that relied mostly on imports, when it comes to heavy mechanical structures and engineering goods. “By producing high-quality steel within Pakistan, we can manufacture such equipment locally by value addition, with the help of downstream industries,” he concluded.
Tuwairqi Steel Mills Limited (TSML), is Pakistan’s first private sector integrated environment-friendly steel manufacturing complex of Al-Tuwairqi Holding (ATH)/ISPC of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The plant, in its first phase, has the capacity to produce up to 1.28 million tons of high quality Direct Reduced Iron (DRI). It spreads over an area of 220 acres at Port Qasim Karachi and employs the world’s most advanced DRI (Direct Reduction of Iron) technology of the MIDREX process owned by Kobe Steel of Japan.
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