Arab Steel reported that the new project for the hot production of steel in Morocco owned by Maghreb Steel is due to launch in January 2010.

The capacity of the new facility will reach 1.5 million tonne per year of HRB and company sources have told that the project is going to be completed in 3 Phases.

The Phase I is for producing HRC with a capacity of 1 million tonne per year and investing MAD 1.3 billion in the process.

The Phase II is due to be launched within this year to produce steel sheets with an investment of MAD 650 million.

The Phase III is due to launch in January 2011 and is directed to steelmaking with a capacity of 1.2 million tonne per year and an investment of MAD 1.2 billion.

The overall cost of the new project is MAD 3.7 billion and it will create 1100 jobs. It will also lead, when all its phases are complete, to reducing the imports volume, developing exports and decreasing production cost, add to that meeting local market needs of those products which were previously imported from the world market.

(Sourced from Arab Steel)