Turkish steel producer İçdaş invests $977 million in capacity expansion

Turkish producer of hot-rolled coils İçdaş Çelik Enerji Tersane ve Ulaşım Sanayi A.Ş. plans to invest 18.17 billion Turkish liras ($977 million) in increasing the capacity of its plants. SteelOrbis reports about it.

This project has already been approved by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization of Turkiye (OBOC).

After the implementation of the plans, the annual capacity of both the steel plant and the rolling mill, which will be built as part of this project, will be about 5 million tons.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in the middle of August, Turkish steel mills were considering stoppages of production due to low demand and high costs. Such plants cannot ensure an increase in prices neither on the domestic nor on the export markets. As a result, the steel production becomes unprofitable.

In addition, since September, Turkiye have grown electricity and gas tariffs for industry by 50%, which further worsens the situation for local steelmakers.

After that, the Turkish Steel Exporters Association reported that local steelmakers intend to abandon investments in new projects in order to preserve existing capacities. This decision was made against the background of rising tariffs for electricity, which is the most important resource for the steel industry.

Turkiye ranks seventh in the world in terms of steel production. In 2021, Turkish enterprises increased production of steel by 12.7% compared to 2020 – up to 40 million tons. This is a record indicator.