KARACHI, March 29: The ground-breaking ceremony of the Tuwairqi Steel Mills (TSM) will be held here at the Bin Qasim on Thursday. This was announced by Al-Tuwairqi Group of Companies chairman Dr Hilal Hussain Al-Tuwairqi while addressing a press conference here on Wednesday.

He said that the group was in the process of setting up a state-of—the-art steel-making plant over 220 acres at Bin Qasim using the most advanced Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) technology.

Dr Hilal announced that in the first phase the one-million-ton per annum DRI plant was scheduled to be completed in 18 to 24 months at a cost of around $130m.

In phase II to be completed by March 2009 with an additional expenditure of $170 million the plant would start making steel billets mainly used in making rebars, wire rods, heavy structures, seamless pipes and other construction materials.

The production capacity of the plant could be expanded from one million to 1.5 million tons per annum in the near future.

It was further stated that the TSM had chosen state-of-the-art technology MIDREX, a direct reduction process which uses natural gas to convert iron ore into direct reduced iron.—APP