Constructional work is running smoothly in Turkey based Kibar Holding and South Korea's Pohang Iron and Steel Company's (POSCO) joint investment to build a stainless cold-rolling plant which was announced on June 6 this year.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, in January this year Kibar Holding and POSCO signed a $350 million deal for the construction of a stainless cold rolling plant in the northwestern Turkish province of Kocaeli, which will have an initial annual production capacity of 200,000 mt. The project is scheduled to be complete in 21 months and the plant to start production by April 2013.
It is expected that Turkey's stainless steel imports might see a considerable fall with the commissioning of the stainless cold-rolling plant. According to Kibar Holding's project manager Mehmet Aydın, the plant jointly planned by Kibar Holding and POSCO could meet 40 percent of Turkey's stainless steel consumption. "We will begin producing nearly 40 percent of our stainless steel consumption in Kocaeli. We will gradually increase our production capacity to 1 million tons," he stated while remarking that Turkey had spent TRY 10 billion on 326,000 mt of stainless steel imports in 2010.