Thailand’s Mill Con Steel Industries' shareholders have given the go ahead to finance the company's ‘green mill’ project.
The green mill can reuse scrap, which will reduce production costs and reliance on imports. The steel mill will also use technology to protect the environment.
About 218 million of the 380 million new shares will be allotted for convertible debentures for a subsidiary in Germany, DEG. The convertible debentures will be completed when the green mill is up and running by the end of next year.
The rest of the new shares will go to IB Thailand, a subsidiary in Italy, and Aero Sun Investments.
Sittichai Leeswadtrakul, managing director of Mill Con, said the project will be run by its subsidiary BRP, and construction began in the first quarter this year.
Mill Con, a manufacturer of round and deformed bars from steel billets, wants to raise capital for its TBt3.8bn ($125.7M) green mill, which is more than 40% per cent complete and will be finished in 2012.
Sittichai noted that domestic and overseas demand for steel is on the rise, and this should boost revenue this year by 10% to TBt12bn ($400.3M).
The green mill will have production capacity of 500kt/y, producing commercial grade and special grade billets for high value-added steel.
Thailand is still importing billets, and the company believes the project can help prevent risk from a shortage of billets in the future as well as reduce cost.
