“Of these seven plants that make up the entire complex, the six plants that will be completed by the month of August will already be operational, and in September next year six plants of the Mutún steel complex will already be operational,” he said stated. in front of the press.
The plant, built with an investment of 546 million dollars, covers an area of 42 hectares in the department of Santa Cruz, where the concentration, pelletizing, direct reduction (DRI), steelmaking, rolling, power plant and auxiliary plants will be located . .
Alvarado described that the RDI site will be completed in February 2025, so the Mutún steel complex will be 100 percent operational from March this year.
He clarified: “Obviously we (…) have a delay in completing the work according to the established schedule and unfortunately this delay is due to, and this is common knowledge, especially here in the province, that the work was paralyzed for a year and a half in 2020.”
Another major reason for the delay in completing the work is the 36-day blockade of Santa Cruz last year by citizens of Santa Cruz and the permanent blockade of the Bioceánica highway, he added.
“For this reason, there was also a significant delay in completing this work and that is why I say that we even had to do an update and this update cannot be done for these reasons either,” he lamented.
Alvarado reiterated that despite these obstacles, the construction of the Mutún steel complex in the municipality of Puerto Suárez is progressing and has so far reached about 85 percent.
Regarding equipment, he stated that 97 percent of all equipment that will be installed in the complex has already been manufactured.
After work was paralyzed by the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez (2019-2020), construction resumed in June 2021 on the instructions of Bolivian President Luis Arce as part of the import substitution industrialization policy.
It is expected that the annual production of 200,000 tons of steel at this complex will allow it to replace almost 50 percent of the almost 450,000 tons imported each year from Argentina, Brazil and Peru.
The ESM will produce and market corrugated steel and wire rod. The former are needed in construction and the latter serve as raw materials for by-products such as nuts, screws and nails.
npg/jpm