Posted on 16 Jun 2023
There is growing interest in the newly emerging challenges faced by the steel industry in the ASEAN region, such as excess capacity and carbon neutrality. What kind of activities will the South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute (SEAISI) pursue? We interviewed Secretary General Yeoh Wee Jin at SEAISI’s annual conference held in Manila, the Philippines.
―While it has been customary for SEAISI to hold its annual conference during May-June, this conference in Manila has been the first conference held during this period in 4 years since the conference in Bangkok, Thailand.
“There are mainly 2 activities conducted by SEAISI, one is the annual conference and the other is the forum held in November. Depending on the circumstances we may change when we hold the conference, for instance by taking into account the busy periods and seasonal factors of each country and taking into consideration other events being held at around the same time of the year.”
“As for our forum scheduled to be held in Singapore this year, we will divide it into the SEAISI Sustainable Construction Forum and the ASEAN Sustainability Forum and simultaneously hold both events. In the past we handled topics regarding construction as part of the Sustainability Forum, but by holding separate forums we would like to evenly focus on both construction and sustainability. Experts from various countries, including Japan, will participate in the events, and in addition to experts of the steel industry, those with expertise of the construction industry will participate as well. Furthermore, there has been a rise in interest in sustainability ever since COP26 in 2021, and so during the forum we will focus on such topics as the policies being pursued and the technologies being developed by each of the countries in Southeast Asia and also technologies related to hydrogen.”
―There is concern regarding the excess capacity in Southeast Asia. What are your thoughts on the issue?
“As we stated in the ‘Country Reports’ presented during this conference, the operating rates of facilities in Thailand have continued to fail to even reach 40%. The steel products produced by local companies mainly consist of bars and shapes, and competition is fierce since they are general-purpose products. As for new investments, while the newly constructed blast furnaces of Indonesia’s Gunung Steel and Krakatau Steel will each have a small annual production capacity of 1.5 million tons and 1.2 million tons, foreign companies like KRAKATAU POSCO will install large facilities that will significantly increase their annual capacity by 3 million tons. In Malaysia, the China-backed company Alliance Steel is scheduling to strengthen and expand their capacity to 10 million tons, and Wenan Steel is currently engineering a new steel plant with a capacity of 10 million tons (in the east Malaysian state of Sarawak). Therefore each of the companies are planning to have a production capacity that exceeds the domestic demand in Malaysia (7.5 million tons).”
“We cannot stop these kinds of activities, nor are we trying to do so. The governments of each country in the region need to grow their economies and to provide for their people, which requires investments. Our aim of publicising the overcapacity issues is to ensure potential investors and governments are aware of the regional developments and would act to manage the situation accordingly. SEAISI has been collaborating with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Steel Committee, which is investigating excess capacity, and during this conference in Manila we had an OECD representative deliver a keynote speech.”
―Going forward, what kinds of new measures would you like to work on as SEAISI, and what do you expect from the Japan Iron and Steel Federation (JISF)?
“Last year we held an online event regarding raw materials. While we have not yet decided whether to hold the event this year, various organizations are keenly interested in matters regarding scrap, direct reduced iron (DRI), iron ore and coking coal, and we have added more raw materials data as part of the statistical data of Southeast Asia gathered by SEAISI.”
“SEAISI is currently has 8 people (including me) and our resources are limited. However, we have support from our members from ASEAN countries as well as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and many others from around the Asia Pacific region, Europe and the rest of the world, to whom we are very grateful. JISF is a very progressive organisation and has been helping and supporting SEAISI activities since SEAISI started. We are also very appreciative of JISF’s continuing contribution in terms of exchanging information, providing many experts to speak in our events (for the benefit of our members) and in statistics (information and analysis),”
Source:Japan Metal Daily
