SHARJAH, 4 September 2005 — The Al Tuwairqi Group of Saudi Arabia has finalized a $820 million investment in a steel making facility in the UAE. The investment will be in phases and in the first phase a one-million-ton-a -year steel mill will be set up in Sharjah’s Hamriyah Free Zone.
Al Tuwairqi Group General Manager M. Imran Agha, who was in Sharjah to finalize the deal, said the group took up the project in view of the huge demand for steel in the UAE, where the construction sector is booming. The UAE’s steel demand is put at 2.5 million tons a year.
The Sharjah complex, admeasuring 1.4 million square meter, will produce one million tons of steel, mainly from iron ore and billets. The facility will be a profile factory for automatic fabrication and welding, and a DRI plant, a billet plant, and a rolling mill, each of the three with one million tons per annum capacity.
The group will also set up a 300-megawatt power generation plant.
The Hamriyah facility will produce custom-designed heavy steel structures used in high rise buildings, bridges, oil rigs, airports, and other load bearing structures.
The DRI plant and the billet plant will go on stream by end-2006 while the rolling mill will start rolling its products by mid-2007.
The profile factory at the steel complex in Hamriya and the steel cut and bend factory in Dubai will become operational by January next year.
The group will also set up 40,000 square meter facility in Dubai Investment Park to produce steel cut and bend products and has set a steel production target of five million tons by 2010.
The group owns two billets manufacturing facilities, one hot rolling mill and one downstream facility for cut and bend, wire mesh and epoxy coating. Other projects of ATG group, currently in progress include Direct Reduction Iron (DRI) plants in Dammam, and DRI and Steel Melt shop in Karachi, Pakistan.
The group acquired a billet-making plant in Britain, in 2003, and turned around the closed unit to produce 700,000 tons of billets per annum.
The group is engaged in diversified manufacturing and trading activities, including steel and value added products manufacturing, electrical products manufacturing and trading of medical and precision testing equipment and building materials.
