The Star, January 20, 2012

BUTTERWORTH: Penang has received two major investments in the steel and gas industries worth about RM700mil, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said.

He said the country’s first steel mill- Ann Joo Steel Bhd- had recently pumped about RM600mil into its new mini blast furnace plant in Prai, which was commissioned on Oct 16 last year.

The other investment worth about RM93mil, he said, was from the leading supplier of gases and performance materials- Air Products Malaysia- which has set up a new air separation unit (ASU) plant in Prai for Ann Joo Steel.

He was opening Air Products new ASU plant in the Prai Industrial Estate here yesterday.

Lim said Air Products’ new plant was its largest ASU in the country with a total production capacity of over 800 tonnes of gas per day.

He said the company had actively invested in two plants in Penang over the last 40 years and he hoped it would open up a third plant here in the near future.

He said Penang topped the other states in terms of investments worth RM12.24bil last year and the figure could have doubled or tripled if the state had practised an ‘open door’ policy.

“But, we feel it is necessary that we attract investments from knowledge-based companies that can offer high value-added services and high technology services.

“That is why we had limited our selection of companies from those which emphasised on product quality, technology and services because we feel Penang should escape the middle-income trap,” he said.

Air Products Tonnage Asia vice-president Douglas Hayes said Penang’s friendly environment augurs well for the company’s operations, which has now gone beyond the provision of customer service.

Air Products, he said, would also build a new gas pipeline linking Prai to Bukit Minyak, which was expected to be functional by the end of this year.

Ann Joo Steel executive director (operations) Lim Hong Hock said Ann Joo’s new mini blast furnace had the capacity of producing up to 500,000mil tons of steel using iron ore.

“This plant is the first of its kind in the country to use iron ore. Out new plant will increase our steel output by 50 per cent to 1.1mil tons a year,” he said. Hong Hock also said that the new plant has created 640 new job positions, which will bring the company’s total employment in Penang to 1,500 employees.