Proposed Blast Furnace Project to produce liquid hot metal (bottom photo) for steel making.
Apex Gem Sdn Bhd, now known as Lion Blast Furnace Sdn Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lion Diversified Holdings Bhd signed an EPCC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning) contract with Wisdri Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited of China to undertake an Integrated Blast Furnace project on 4 February 2008.
The signing was for the supply of plant and machinery including construction and commissioning costing USD165 million for the 2,580 m3 size Blast Furnace with capacity of 2.5 million tons per annum to be undertaken at our Banting Steel Complex. The entire project encompassing the Blast Furnace, Coke Oven, Sinter Plant, Pellet Plant and Raw Material Handling Yard is expected to cost approximately USD500 million. | The Blast Furnace, which is expected to be completed in 18 months’ time will produce liquid hot metal and some pig iron to be used as feedstock for our steel making plants to produce steel. The hot metal will help to replace imported scrap as the raw material and reduce the reliance on scrap where the international scrap price has soared to a record high of US$500 per ton. By using hot metal which is from iron ore fines, our steel making operations will be able to produce high quality and higher grade steel at substantially lower cost. It will also help to improve our productivity and increase our steel making capacity at the Banting Complex from 3.2 million tons to 5 million tons.
Group Chairman & CEO, Tan Sri William Cheng signed on behalf of Apex Gem while Wisdri President, Mr Xiang Mingwu signed on behalf of the Chinese organisation. The signing was witnessed by His Excellency Cheng Yong Hua, the Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China to Malaysia.
Wisdri (the former Wuhan Iron and Steel Design & Research General Incorporation of Ministry of Metallurgical Industry) is a hi-tech company with high level scientific technology involved in technological research, project consultation & engineering and project management. The major shareholders of Wisdri consist of China Metallurgical Group Corporation, Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Co and Angang New Steel Company Limited. |