KL to build steel plant

KL to build steel plant

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): A Chinese company is to partner firms from Hong Kong and Singapore to build a giant steel plant in Malaysia's southern Johore state, a deal spurned two years ago by Taiwan, officials said Saturday.

"Johore has found a new foreign investor for the project. But we cannot identify the name of the Chinese corporation as discussions are still ongoing," said an official from the Johore chief minister's office.

The proposed rolled steel mill plant, to be built on an 800- hectare (2,000 acre) site, is expected to cost 8.3 billion ringgit (US$3.32 billion) and will to produce 5,000 tons of flat steel a year.

Taiwan's state-owned China Steel Corporation (CSC) was to have taken a 40 percent interest in the mammoth venture that would have been the single largest investment in Malaysia, and the largest ever made by Taiwan.

But the Taiwanese authorities decided in 1992 to suspend the investment, saying parliament had not allocated funds for the project, officials here said.

"But this time we are confident the planned rolled steel mill will take off," the Johore official said following local newsreports that one of China's "super enterprises" was keen to invest six billion ringgit ($2.4 billion) in the proposed project.