SteelAsia offers to revive defunct National Steel
To ride the infrastructure boom, SteelAsia Manufacturing Corporation has offered to acquire the mothballed National Steel Corporation in Iligan city. SteelAsia is the largest reinforced steel bar maker in Southeast Asia, while NSC was once the largest steel mill in Asia until it failed to modernize, eventually declared bankruptcy, was privatized thrice, and mothballed again in 2009. “We have the expertise and the balance sheet to take over Iligan and re-start our quest for a steel industry that will serve as the backbone of our industrialisation,” said Benjamin Yao, president of SteelAsia in a press release. In its proposed acquisition to National Development Co.’s general manager Ma. Lourdes Rebueno, SteelAsia said it will pursue an asset-purchase agreement and will negotiate with all valid claimants, including the government.
