Brazilian steelmaker Gerdau expects to start up its Gerdau Sipar mill in Argentina in March next year, a company’s executive said this week.
The mill located in the city of Perez, in the greater Rosario area, was initially expected to come online by the end of this year, as previously reported by SteelOrbis.
Fernando Lombardo, Gerdau’s director in Argentina, said the mill is 90 percent complete. The remaining 10 percent refers to the company’s testing period, which began this month.
The Gerdau-owned plant received some $231 million in investments and is said to be one of Argentina’s most modern steel mills, according to the governor of Santa Fe, Miguel Lifschitz.
The Gerdau Sipar mill is expected to have a 650,000 mt/year finished steel capacity to meet the demands of both the domestic and the export markets.
Currently, Gerdau has a rolling mill in the city of Perez, which receives imported billet. The new plant should replace some $100 million/year investments in imports, since it will be able to produce the billets from scrap. The new mill will also recycle some 260,000 mt/year of scrap, according to Argentinian media.
Earlier this year, Argentina’s government-owned news agency Telam said the country had a 1.7 million mt/year longs capacity, which would then be expanded by 40 percent with Sipar.