New projects in the steel industry

During the last week, a number of the companies worldwide, threatened by the possible monopoly of Mittal Steel in the world steel market, in case of its acquisition of Arcelor, announced the implementation of big steel projects. In Asia, in particular, Chinese company Baosteel announced intentions to buy its smaller regional competitor Jinan Iron & Steel, and to build jointly new plant with a capacity of 10 million tons a year near Shanghai. A number of new projects will be realized in Vietnam with participation of Chinese companies as well. New projects and plans for the future also have been announced by certain South American companies. Thus, Brazilian company Gerdau announced its plan to build new plants with a total capacity of 700,000 tons a year in Colombia and Chili. Argentina's Ternium intends to build a new plant in Venezuela. Chili-based Huachipato already started the construction of a new rolling plant with a capacity of 550,000 a year. But the largest of the announced projects is that of Australian businessman Sean Condon's, who invited the leading Asian metallurgical companies to participate in the consortium on the development of new coal and iron ore deposits of the fifth continent. The value of this mega project is estimated as $45 billion.