PESQUERÍA, Nuevo León (09/18/2013) - President Enrique Peña Nieto inaugurated Ternium's new plant, located in this municipality, which will have a capacity of one and a half million tons of cold rolled products and 400,000 tons of galvanized products. It will also employ 600 people.
With this plant, which began construction in 2011, the automotive industry will stop importing cold-rolled steel sheet and highly specialized galvanized steel used for the exterior parts of automobiles. According to the head of the Ministry of Economy (SE), Ildefonso Guajardo, who also attended the inauguration event, this plant will be able to supply 40% of the inputs that were previously being imported for the automotive industry.
The official referred to the Techint organization, which represents four large cohesive groups in Mexico today: Tenaris Tamsa, Ternium, Techint Construcciones and Tech Petroleum.
"Those four branches of the Techint corporation are the ones that are fairly representing Mexico's export potential," said the official when highlighting that Nuevo León "leads with almost three and a half billion foreign investment accumulated so far this year."
He said that "through the response of investments such as those we have witnessed so far in his administration, Altos Hornos, with El Fénix, Grupo de Acero, in Coahuila, and now here Ternium, in Pesquería, Nuevo León, it is clear to us that this year alone we are consolidating 6 billion dollars (mdd) of investment in the steel industry, with the generation of almost five thousand jobs.
He also referred to the unfair competition in this industry and reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that this practice from countries such as China will no longer be allowed. He said that during this administration of the 100% of the cases of unfair practices, 50% correspond to the steel industry. "Today we can say, with great satisfaction, that we have really managed to improve, by far, the condition for the national steel industry by protecting it against dumpings that are carried out by international groups," he assured.
When speaking about the Energy Reform, he indicated that it is important that it materializes, since the main input for the strategic steel sector is energy.
Therefore, he added, the availability of abundant energy at competitive prices is essential.
He said that the presidential instruction is to increase domestic purchases to strengthen the national industry "and the best example is the Los Ramones bidding process, where Pemex reached an agreement with the steel industry to achieve competitive conditions and good prices for the incorporation of national inputs in the construction of the most important gas pipeline that Mexico will ever have," he said.
Source: Vanguardia Industrial
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