Emirates Steel has invited bids for Phase 3 of the company?s expansion project which will comprise a steel melting plant, a hot rolled coil (HRC) mill and ancillaries.
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According to Emirates Steel's Chairman, HE Engineer Suhail Mubarak Musallam Athaeeth Al Ameri, Emirates Steel plans to award the contracts for Phase 3 by December 2011. He stressed that the project has attracted significant interest from various internationally-renowned bidders.
The project is expected to be completed within 30 months from the award date, with commercial production of HRC anticipated in mid-2014, adding an additional production capacity of 1.6 million metric tonnes per annum (MTPA) of product to the Company's portfolio, the company said in statement.
Emirates Steel has already completed, over a period of five years, a two-phased expansion program costing approximately US$2.45 billion. The program consists of new rolling mills, steel manufacturing and direct reduction plants, together with a heavy and jumbo sections mill, due to come on stream by the end of the year. The new plants increased the Company's rolling output capacity from 650,000 MTPA to approximately 3mn MTPA at present.
Bin Athaeeth expects an estimated 2,000 additional jobs for UAE nationals will be created once the three phases of the project are complete.
Phase 3 will primarily service GCC demand for HRC across a range of downstream segments, including: pipe producers; cold rolling producers of galvanised coil and coated sheeting products; boiler, tank and pressure vessel producers; and structural steel fabricators.
Several innovative energy reduction options are being considered for Phase 3. These include continuous strip production to reduce energy requirements and to maximize yields in the rolling process, energy recovery from the electric arc furnace (EAF) gas emissions to produce steam for power generation and for the production of industrial water, scrap pre-heating systems to reduce the EAF's electricity consumption, together with various other systems to reduce electricity and water consumption levels.
