Investments sum up US$200 million and stimulate the long-desired local metal-mechanical pool
Guilherme Azevedo
After the 2008’s international financial crisis started to threaten directly the very survival of the still mill pool in the municipality of Marabá, in the southeastern region of Pará, the announcement of investments able to double the local capacity of Siderúrgica Norte Brasil
(Sinobras) seems to indicate that the dream is not over.
Already being built, the construction and industrial assembling of the second phase of investments of Sinobras in Marabá is worth US$200 million. It should add more 500 thousand t/year laminate steel to the current production of 380 thousand t/year.
Sinobras’ local activities started in the same year the international crisis blew up, set up at a 140.23 ha area in the industrial district of the municipality. Today that steel mill employs 1,284 people. It belongs to the Aço Cearense Group, which controls other five companies and two industrial plants in Caucaia in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza (CE).
For a metal-mechanical pool
Actions taken to expand Sinobras’ activities in Marabá have strengthened the old project for a local metal-mechanical pool. For that purpose local city hall and commercial association have worked for a long time, together with the Federation of Industries of Pará (Fiepa), the state department of Industry and Commerce and also the federal government. But the project has suffered many comings and goings and now it is moving towards its consolidation.
The municipality is attractive: it is the administrative and economic center of the southern region of Pará and it produces R$3.742 billion yearly in goods and services, according to 2011 IBGE’s data. It has had and economic performance that has made it rank fourth in GDP in the state. The population was calculated in 2013 (UBGE) at 251 thousand people, which makes it the fourth most populous municipality in the state.
On Marabá’s behalf, which is located in the confluence of the Itacaiúnas and Tocantins Rivers, also speaks highly its proximity to the iron mines in the region, Parauapebas among them, the source of the iron ore used by Sinobras to produce steel. The steel mill industry is one of the main job multipliers: for each direct job it creates, 23 indirect ones come up, according to calculation of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV).
The expansion of the steel mill pool projected, with the chain of the metal mechanical segment feeding itself from the steel generated there, is able to avoid what happened after 2008, when the cancellation of external orders as a result of the crisis made a significant part of the local production discontinue. In the accounts of the class entities, out of the 11 steel mills operating at that time, a third or less remained. Sinobras was among the resilient ones because its production aims at Brazil’s consumption. It is drained with trucks (the same mode used to receive the ore), with an exit flow of about 1 thousand trucks/month.
New production unit
In Marabá, Sinobras has today four operating blast furnace units to produce pig iron; machinery to transform pig iron into steel pins; lamination to prepare steel laminates (iron bar and wires for nails, pins, hooks, etc.) and manufacture of wire and thin metal bars, to deliver wires’ byproducts (such as steel threads for civil construction l SI 60, flat wires for the industry and re-cooked wires for construction).
The expansion plan includes a new production area, called Lamination 2, which will have a 500 thousand t/year capacity and will produce conventional wire spools from 5.5mm to 25mm wide, iron bars 6.3mm to 16mm wide and compact spools (10mm to 25 mm wide iron bars’ spools). Operating Lamination 2 also includes a re-heating oven, laminator and the exit of conventional and compact spools with 110t/hour capacity. The unit is expected to start operations in March 2016.
The project also disposes the implementation of a new substation and a 230 kV transmission line 13 km long. Projected to start operations in March 2015, the new power infrastructure targets on meeting the needs arising from the increase in production and on enabling future use of the power generated at Belo Monte hydroelectric plant Monte, in the Xingu River, in the municipality of Altamira (PA). Another new piece of equipment, a shredder for scrap iron, with a 170 thousand t/year capacity, is to start operations next December.
Sinobras estimates that the construction phase will employ 1,500 workers and the operation of the new facilities, 300 new employees. “We have significant challenges ahead, but Sinobras strongly believes in the development of the region where is has been set up and has worked for it”, says Milton Lima, industrial director.
Marabá, a stage of fierce and bloody battles for the possession of the land and of its local wealth since at least the 1970’s will be able to play another role today. The civilization brought by steel and its complementary production chain stands for the possibility of a path mainly prosperous and peaceful. From dust it came, to steel it will go.
Fonte: Revista O Empreiteiro
