According to WAM, the official news agency of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on June 17 General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, led the official inauguration of the first phase of the continuing expansion of state-owned Emirates Steel Industries (ESI), a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Basic Industries Corporation, at its new facilities in the industrial city of Mussaffah in Abu Dhabi.
With the completion of the first phase of the AED 9 billion (US$2.45 billion) expansion plan, ESI has become the first fully-integrated steel manufacturer in the UAE and the largest steel plant in the country, capable of manufacturing raw steel from iron oxide pellets. This now allows ESI to reduce production costs by about 40 percent and to also reduce its reliance on imported materials. Prior to the commissioning of the first phase, ESI was the only significant domestic supplier of reinforcing bar, rolling imported steel billets to create the finished product.
The first phase of the expansion, with AED 3 billion (US$ 816.86 million) expenditure, has doubled the company's annual production capacity to two million metric tons. Within the frame of the government's economic diversification strategy, ESI aims to build a new steel plant with an annual steel production capacity of five million metric tons within five years.
The second phase of the expansion plan, which is scheduled to reach completion in the last quarter of 2011, will increase the company's production capacity to 3 million mt per year, increase the plant's total area to 2 square kilometers and will introduce heavy and jumbo steel sections to ESI's product portfolio.