based Al-Tuwairqi Holding Co will start production at a new steel complex in 2010 which would reduce its steel billets imports to nil by next year, a senior company executive said Sunday. The complex, with a production capacity of 2 million tonnes, will raise to 3 million tonnes the steel billet production capacity of the group, which owns 76 percent of al-Ittefaq Steel Products Co, one of Saudi Arabia's three largest steel producers, said Faisal Al-Haddawi, a board member at the firm. “This is part of our strategic plan to become a fully-integrated steel producer and will reinforce our position as the Kingdom's largest private steel producer,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “We will commission the complex by 2010. We bought the land and the machinery. We are off with the project. Without this project we will need to import steel billets to meet the design capacity of our reinforced steel bar plants,” he said. The steel complex, which includes a billet unit, a direct reduction unit and a melt shop, will be called the Arab Iron and Steel Co, which is 100-percent owned by family-owned Al-Tuwairqi Holding Co, he said.
