To be honest , if Pakistan Steeles mills simple hired cleaning workers to maintain property (Property Management) it would be enough to improve the presentation factor for company
The facility looks like a filthy rusted temple with garbage and filth all around the company
a) Whole building property is dirty / filthy and hazard to life anyone walking inside it
b) Garbage , junk , raw material , pollutant levels spraying the raw particles across the acres of land etc
c) The Machinery (new machines can easily be purchased with loan from banks)
d) The power source (Coal/Gas) is being imported already from Qatar and Sindh coal
80% of the neglect is on maintaining International standards for maintaining a Industrial complex
Consider this that Pakistan is building CPEC and GWADAR, so where will all steel? come from ? for these mega projects ?
It is no BRAINER !!!
Honourable AZADPAKISTAN2009,
I have very high regard of you opinions, therefore I felt obliged to state the reasons for my recommendation that PSM should be shut down.
Being an engineer by profession, I look at the cost of production versus what price I can sell my product at. No different from any shop keeper or a street hawker.
I was in Pakistan when PSM was being built and quite a few of the initial engineers employed there were my friends. I especially went to see its world famous conveyor. Therefore I know a fair bit about its economics.
To make one ton of steel one needs about 3 tons of Iron ore & one ton of coal. Thar coal can never be used in steel making. Iron ore is Hematite and / or Magnetite (compounds of Iron & oxygen). One needs close to 2000C to remove Iron from oxygen. For such high temperatures, Anthracite or Coke is required which is imported from Australia or South Africa.
Original feasibility envisaged production of about 1-million ton of pig Iron initially from imported iron ore and gradually switching to indigenous ore from Kalabagh etc. As usual in Pakistan, development of Kalabagh & other deposits was not followed up and until 2008, all of the iron ore was imported from Australia, Canada & Brazil. Later some work was done on processing of Chiniot ore. However, at 50% capacity, out of requirement for steel mill of about 125,000 tons per month of iron ore; no more than 40,000 tons per month can be produced locally.
Initially manpower target was about 10,000, but politics by various PPP Gov’ts (just like PIA) resulted in actual employment of 20,000. This means that at full capacity PSM produces 50 tons of steel per man per annum versus state of the art steel plants produce 400 tons of steel per man per annum. In other words PSM worker is 8 times less efficient.
You casually mention that new machinery can be purchased from loan from local banks. My data is about 10 years old but to give an idea; estimated cost of proper modernization of an integrated steel mill such as PSM would be about $1000/- per ton of annual capacity. This means upward of $1-billion would be required. Do you know local banks that would lend that much money for plant whose viability is suspect?
Now consider this:
PSM imports iron ore from as far as Brazil and coal from Australia/ South Africa and its productivity per man is 8 times less than that of modern steel mills. Even if you fire half of the manpower and assuming you can get a bank to lend you $1-billion; do you really think that PSM can produce steel cheaper than or equal to the Chinese import; something that even the modern factories in the West are unable to?
Remember Pakistan is short of funds; it defies logic to pay $100 for the import of raw material and then spend money to make steel, if you can have be finished product for less than the cost of raw materials alone.
There is no hiding the fact that PSM is a charity run by GOP. I leave it to your judgement if you still think that my recommendation to close down the PSM is a "No Brainer".
lands on Mars on his Way to
Planet Never Going to Happen.
