Struggling to produce refractory materials to meet the demand of its domestic steel industry, Venezuela has been importing the product from Brazil in order to keep up the operations of state-run steel producer Sidor as well as the output of other segments, such as cement and aluminum, which also use the product.
In a meeting with several of the state-owned companies that comprise the Corporación Siderúrgica de Venezuela (CSV), leaders of refractories producer CVG Refractarios, along with steel producer Sidor and HBI producer Orinoco, discussed the country’s capacity to produce refractories to meet its domestic demand in a number of sectors, including the steel segment.
Since October 2014, CVG Refractarios hasn’t received enough feedstock to produce the product, according to a media report.
CSV’s president, Jesús Zambrano Mata, conducted the meeting and said a commission has been working to substitute the imports so the country could produce it domestically.
Mata said other meeting will take place in order to create synergies among the companies that are part of CSV, including refractories producer CVG Refractarios.
Two weeks ago, workers at CVG Refractarios said the company was importing the product to supply the operations of steel producer Sidor, which hasn’t been able to meet at least a fourth of its production capacity in the first eight months of 2015.
Recent media reports said Sidor produced 804,000 mt of steel in the January-August period. Steel production at the state-run company in August declined 33.8 percent, month-on-month, to 79,191 mt, the third lowest output rate so far in the year.
Media reports said sources expect the company will produce about 1.2 million mt of steel in 2015, which would represent 26 percent of its capacity production. While Sidor has produced an average of 100,000 mt per month this year, in 2007 it produced an average of 358,916 mt per month of steel.