DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/23 January) –A steel bar company is planning to build a P2-billion plant in Barangay Bunawan Proper once the firm gets an approval from the city council.
The report of the city council committee on housing, rural and urban development said that the proposed plant is a project of New Carcar Manufacturing Inc., a subsidiary of SteelAsia, one of the biggest rolling bar producers in the country.
“The establishment here of a steel plant could mean savings in terms of freight for our construction industry. This would mean another plus point to would-be investors to make our city a better proposition for them to invest,” the committee report cited.
It added that the proposed reinforced steel bar rolling mill project will be the first in Mindanao. SteelAsia already has steel plants in Cebu and Laguna supplying the steel bar requirements of the Visayas and Luzon, respectively.
The proposed plant will supply not just Davao but also the rest of Mindanao.
“Steel is one of the foundations of national development.
With this steel plant, Davao City not only would have the honor of having the only reinforced steel bar rolling mill plant in Mindanao, but also be able to play a bigger role in the development and progress of the island,” the committee report said.
Antonio M. Lorenzana, the company’s chief operating officer, last year requested the city council to reclassify the proposed site to accommodate its proposed plant.
The company has asked the lawmakers to reclassify an area at Purok 17 in Bunawan Proper from medium industrial zone to heavy industrial zone.
On Dec. 9 last year, the committee on housing, rural and urban development conducted a hearing on the proposal, and recommended to approve the request subject to various conditions.
One of the conditions requires the applicant to put up “an industrial materials recovery facility that will utilize the waste products for conversion into environmentally safe and cheap construction materials.
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The committee also asked the company to submit to the city council a development plan to compute carbon emission, and to submit its project to monitoring by a multi-partite team to be headed by the city
government. (MindaNews)
