Posted on 27 Oct 2026
This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 19, 2026 - October 25, 2026
On March 28, 2025, tremors from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar caused an under-construction 30-storey State Audit Office building in Bangkok, Thailand — about 1,000km away — to fall like a house of cards. It was the only building to collapse in the country’s capital, and it was later discovered that substandard materials had been used, including induction furnace (IF) steel in the rebar component.
Rebar, short for reinforcing bar, is a steel rod or mesh embedded in concrete to give it the tensile strength — the maximum stretching or pulling force before it breaks — it lacks on its own.
The incident raised concerns about the use of IF steel in construction and galvanised regional iron and steel organisations to lobby their respective governments to put a stop to, or control its use.
Speaking exclusively to City & Country, South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute (SEAISI) secretary-general Yeoh Wee Jin says Asean governments need to step up to ensure IF steel is not introduced in the construction of buildings and vital infrastructure such as bridges, owing to its inferior quality.
SEAISI is a technical institute and its main objective is to promote the iron and steel industry in Southeast Asia. Established within SEAISI is the Asean Iron and Steel Council (AISC), which is an autonomous body dedicated to dealing with economic and trade matters. The AISC has come up with a statement of concern signed by its members — Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — and a report on IF steel.
The report highlighted how IF steel, compared with those from the tried and tested processes of blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF/BOF) and electric arc furnace (EAF), has far more impurities within the steel that reduce its toughness and fatigue resistance, increase its brittleness and may cause it to not perform as required in critical structures.
The BF/BOF system uses chemical fire where super-fast, high-purity oxygen is blasted onto liquid iron and normally produces the best quality steel.
The EAF process uses miniature lightning strikes where massive electrical currents jump across the gap between overhead graphite electrodes to melt steel scrap. All impurities are removed using oxygen and other ingredients before the steel is cast.
In contrast, the IF process melts steel scrap using wireless electricity or induction but does not remove the impurities. As a result, they remain in the steel once cast. It is like a big pot where you put the metal in, melt it and pour it out.
“The point that we are trying to make is that you cannot circumvent the chemical process. The IF process by itself does not put in oxygen. So the first round of refining is not up to a good level and then it does not have a second refining process,” says Yeoh.
He highlights how IF is ideal for small batch melts like precious metals or speciality items for use in machines or the automotive industry. It was never designed to cast large quantities of construction material.
The amount of IF steel rose in Southeast Asia when IF equipment was exported from China after its government imposed a blanket ban on IF steel production on June 30, 2017.
According to a report published in August in the Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), a leading metals information provider, IF equipment exported to countries in Southeast Asia increased significantly after the ban.
“Southeast Asia’s share of China’s exports in [industrial IF] rose systematically — from 21.4% in 2017 to a peak of 40.6% in 2021, and still 31.5% in 2025 — while the export value to the region climbed from US$28.8 million in 2017 to US$125.3 million in 2025,” SMM reported.
SMM also highlighted how Indonesian imports of IF equipment rose roughly 19-fold over eight years, resulting in the country becoming the world’s No 1 destination for IF equipment.
The IF steel ban in China followed the May 12, 2008, earthquake in Sichuan province measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, which killed 87,000 people, including more than 5,000 students when their schools collapsed. It also left 370,000 people injured and five million homeless.
After some investigation, it was discovered that many of the schools that collapsed had used substandard materials, including IF steel, which were not suitable for construction use. Unable to control the production of IF steel, China’s government took the step to stop it altogether.
Yeoh points out that the concern for Southeast Asian nations stems from the fact that some of them are on or close to the Ring of Fire, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Any seismic activities could have an impact on their buildings and infrastructure.
Malaysia, while not on the Ring of Fire, has experienced tremors from earthquakes in Indonesia. In fact, on Aug 15 this year, tremors were felt across Penang after an earthquake struck North Sumatera. Thankfully, no buildings were damaged or collapsed. Tremors from other earthquakes, like the one in Aceh in 2004, were felt all the way in Kuala Lumpur.
While Malaysia has not outright banned IF steel production, its authorities stated in the Steel Industry Roadmap 2035 report, launched in September 2025, that policy guidelines set in 2017 restrict new IF capacity for the production of construction steel.
However, Yeoh believes more can be done to ensure that IF steel does not somehow slip through the net and end up in construction sites.
Yeoh highlights how most construction steel standards are based on BF/BOF and EAF quality, but with the introduction of IF, the standards may not be sufficient to ensure its quality.
In the incident in Bangkok, news reports highlighted that the rebar steel used was supplied by Xin Ke Yuan Steel, which is known to produce steel using the IF process. Inspection by the Iron and Steel Institute of Thailand found that the company’s 32mm and 20mm deformed steel bars (a type of rebar) used at the State Audit Office building failed to meet safety standards.
“All the iron producers will say, ‘I have passed the test. I have my certification. I have passed the requirements.’ But the contradiction is, if you say you’ve passed the test, why is your iron product failing? Once you pass the initial test, you get your certificate for that one time. After that there are no further checks. The question is, how do you ensure the consistency of quality over the period of time after the test?” says Yeoh.
The AISC report’s main recommendation is for construction steel to only be from BF/BOF and EAF producers to ensure quality is maintained and structures do not collapse. For countries with IF steel factories, there needs to be additional testing before the steel is used in construction as well as consistent monitoring.
Some nations are looking into the situation more closely. For Malaysia, where new towers are continuously being built, should we be testing the steel used more vigilantly, increasing enforcement or even imposing an outright ban on IF steel?
Yeoh puts it simply, “Are you waiting for a building to collapse before you take action?”
Source:The Edge
