THE local Atoun Steel Industry (ASI) will move forward with plans to build a $265 million steel plant at Yanbu’s Second Industrial City after Riyadh granted a fuel allocation for a related power station.

The plant consists of three phases: Phase One is a mini-mill steel plant with a capacity of 900,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of steel billets; Phase Two includes a 1.2-million-tpy direct reduced iron (DRI plant); and Phase Three comprises facilities for wire rod rolling. The project is due for completion by 2013.
Austroplan carried out the feasibility study. Mclellan and Partners is the project site consultant and Horst Weisinger Consulting is the technological consultant.
When completed, the plant is set to include a billet caster producing 900,000 tpy of steel billets and a rolling mill producing 500,000 tpy of steel rebar used in the construction industry. The metal will be predominately sold in the domestic market.
Austria’s Saudi Voest Alpine, a subsidiary of Siemens, is providing the plant technology for the facility. ASI, a closed joint stock company comprising mostly of Saudi private investors, has been granted a loan of around $147 million from the state-owned Saudi Industrial Development Fund to help cover the cost of constructing the plant.