KARACHI, March 10: The ground-breaking ceremony of $130 million Al Tuwairqi Steel Mills Limited (TSML) will be held at the end of this month. The first phase of the one-million-ton per annum steel making plant will be completed in the next 18-24 months.

The Al-Tuwairqi Group of Companies of Saudi Arabia, having 100 per cent equity in the project, has already acquired 220 acres of land at Bin Qasim.

In the first phase, the plant will make steel billets, mainly used in making rebar, wire rods, heavy structures, seamless pipes and construction materials. The production capacity of the plant can be expanded to 1.5 million tons per annum in future.

Giving details of the Saudi investment, TSML director projects Zaigham Adil Rizvi told Dawn on Friday that the plant would create 1,000 direct and 3,500 indirect jobs. He said that after investing $130m in the first phase, the group would invest $170 million in the phase-II.

He said TSML had chosen state-of-the-art US technology MIDREX, a direct reduction process that used natural gas to convert iron into direct reduced iron (DRI).

Steel making would be carried out at 150 tons capacity electric arc furnace to produce 1,010,100 tons of liquid steel per annum, he added.

On billet casting process, he said a five strand billet caster of 1,000,000 tons per annum capacity would be set up to cast liquid steel into 130x130 and 170x170mm size billets. The billet caster will produce billets at a lower cost, with lesser wastage as compared to indirect production of billets by rolling the blooms.

Mr Rizvi pointed out that the project would utilize 1.5 million tons of iron ore oxide pellets and calibrated lump ore per annum as raw material for the production of one million tons of direct reduced iron. He said the plant would require 40mmcfd of natural gas per day as raw material for the DRI plant.

On power needs, he said in the first phase, the plant would install a 20-25mw combined cycle gas turbine for power generation to meet its electricity requirements. This would require 5mmcfd of gas as fuel. Subsequently, TSML will need 180mw from Wapda as power requirement in the phase-II.

He said the government had extended the status of Export Processing Zone to TSML and also allowed the plant to export its production.

About the price of TSML products, Mr Rizvi said it would be cost effective.

The annual requirement of steel products in the country is five million tons. The state-owned Pakistan Steel meets only 20 per cent requirement.