Al-Tawariqi Steel Mills to start production in June

Karachi: Al-Tawariqi Steel Mills (ATSM) of Saudi Group of Industrialists will start its production in the coming June. The production capacity of the mills will be 1.28 million metric tons per annum, ATSM's Director Projects, Zaigham Rizvi said.

He said the first phase of this mega project of Direct Foreign Investment (DFI), with initial injection of 1000 million dollar, is near its completion. He said the ATSM management is exploring all avenues to use maximum raw material available in Pakistan, like iron ore from Balochistan.

Rizvi said the work on the second phase of Al-Tawariqi Steel Mills (ATSM) will be started by mid of 2009. This will bring further big amount of FDI from Al-Tawariqi Saudi Group here and will comprise various projects aimed at value-addition.

ATSM is located near Pakistan Steel Mills at the industrial estate of Port Qasim. This will create thousands jobs of different cadres for Pakistanis besides becoming good source of revenue to Pakistan's national exchequer, he mentioned adding that ATSM will help boost downstream in the country. With commissioning of Al-Tawariqi Steel Mills, Pakistan's gap between supply and demand of steel will be significantly narrowed down.

For this purpose, the Government has already planned for expansion of Pakistan Steel Mills enhancing its production capacity to 3 million metric tons per annum. Pakistan has been meeting major portion of its increasing steel demand through imports against huge bills. This also hampers the growth of construction industry and other steel based industries in the country.