US-based firm unveils US$750M revitalisation plan for shuttered Point Lisas steel plant

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

A decade af­ter the clo­sure of Arcelor­Mit­tal left hun­dreds job­less and a pre­mier in­dus­tri­al as­set aban­doned, a mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment de­scribed as “Lazarus aris­ing from the dead” is now bring­ing heavy man­u­fac­tur­ing back to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Lo­cal sub­sidiary Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny, backed by Unit­ed States par­ent firm Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion, of­fi­cial­ly kicked off site re­fur­bish­ment yes­ter­day, with plans to pump an over­all in­vest­ment of US$750 mil­lion in­to the de­vel­op­ment, with the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate up to 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs.

High-rank­ing diplo­mat­ic and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau, gath­ered at the fa­cil­i­ty to mark what Lan­dau called the “res­ur­rec­tion” of the na­tion’s steel in­dus­try and a key break­through in in­ter­na­tion­al min­er­al sup­ply chains.

The Point Lisas steel plant, long con­sid­ered the pride of Trinidad’s in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, had sat idle for a decade fol­low­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal’s sud­den clo­sure in 2016, which left 644 work­ers dis­placed.

Liq­uida­tors Christo­pher Kelshall and Kei­th Daniel spent years nav­i­gat­ing com­plex pro­ceed­ings be­fore Pin­na­cle ac­quired the site and ex­e­cut­ed key agree­ments with land­lord Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co).

Speak­ing at a gate-open­ing cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, Lan­dau em­pha­sised that the re­open­ing rep­re­sents a tan­gi­ble vic­to­ry in turn­ing po­lit­i­cal cam­paign promis­es in­to re­al eco­nom­ic progress, as he praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers for dri­ving ne­go­ti­a­tions to com­ple­tion.

“I have now been in this job about a year and a half and I think this may be the most emo­tion­al cer­e­mo­ny that I’ve had the ho­n­our and priv­i­lege of at­tend­ing ... This is the mo­ment in which you can see words and ideas trans­formed in­to ac­tion,” Lan­dau said.

“I think there is noth­ing more beau­ti­ful, frankly, than be­ing able to see a plant like this that’s been shut­tered come back to life. It’s like Lazarus aris­ing from the dead again.”

Lan­dau framed the joint ven­ture as a cru­cial re­sponse to decades of in­dus­tri­al de­cline in both na­tions.

He point­ed out that ex­ces­sive reg­u­la­tion and out­sourc­ing over past decades al­lowed vi­tal pro­cess­ing in­dus­tries and sup­ply chains to mi­grate over­seas, par­tic­u­lar­ly to Chi­na.

“When we’re talk­ing about the strate­gic im­per­a­tive of en­sur­ing our crit­i­cal min­er­als sup­ply chain, this is ex­act­ly what we’re talk­ing about,” Lan­dau not­ed.

“We let a lot of our crit­i­cal sup­ply chain com­plete­ly fall out of our hands, so that we found that if we need cer­tain min­er­als or oth­er es­sen­tials for life, guess what? We’re de­pen­dent on a for­eign coun­try that may not have our best in­ter­ests at heart.”

The event al­so un­der­scored a grow­ing con­ver­gence be­tween pub­lic diplo­mat­ic goals and pri­vate sec­tor ex­e­cu­tion, as Lan­dau high­light­ed that while gov­ern­ments es­tab­lish frame­works and fa­cil­i­tate in­cen­tives, the pri­vate sec­tor re­mains the pri­ma­ry en­gine of long-term eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty.

“This isn’t just a lot of talk about part­ner­ship; it’s ac­tu­al, tan­gi­ble re­sults,” Lan­dau said, point­ing out that US Em­bassy of­fi­cials worked close­ly with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to help struc­ture the agree­ment.

“It gives me great plea­sure to see steel, to see vana­di­um, to see ac­tu­al re­al things. Those gates are go­ing to re­open,” the se­nior US of­fi­cial said.

Tak­ing the podi­um, Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion CEO Ed­win Ben­nett an­nounced an ini­tial planned in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion to kick off the im­me­di­ate re­fur­bish­ment of the plant, tar­get­ed for first pro­duc­tion by the end of 2027.

Ben­nett pro­ject­ed that the ini­tial restart would gen­er­ate 350 jobs and when in pro­duc­tion, 500 full-time jobs.

“And af­ter an ex­pan­sion in the fu­ture, we plan to spend an­oth­er $500 mil­lion and dou­ble the num­ber of jobs, so to 1,000,” he added.

Be­yond tra­di­tion­al steel mak­ing, the plant’s pri­ma­ry dif­fer­en­tia­tor would be the pro­cess­ing and pro­duc­tion of vana­di­um, a vi­tal strate­gic met­al heav­i­ly utilised in aero­space en­gi­neer­ing and bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy.

“Our vi­sion is to pro­duce the equiv­a­lent of 50 per cent of Amer­i­can con­sump­tion of vana­di­um—in oth­er words, 100 per cent of the quan­ti­ty of vana­di­um that the Unit­ed States im­ports ... We look at this as a crit­i­cal as­set for West­ern crit­i­cal min­er­al sup­ply chains, putting Trinidad on the map as a key play­er in the West­ern rein­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and West­ern cre­ation of crit­i­cal min­er­al sup­ply chains out­side of Chi­na,” Ben­nett added.

Cur­rent­ly, Chi­na and Rus­sia con­trol more than 80 per cent of glob­al vana­di­um pro­duc­tion, he said.

Mean­while, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John stressed that she does not want a re­peat of the clo­sure of Arcelor­Mit­tal back in 2016, main­tain­ing that in­vest­ment must al­so mean op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals.

“Two clo­sures 13 years apart on the same stretch of coast. But to­day, we are shift­ing that tide and propos­ing a third econ­o­my on this same ground,” John added.

But as the gates pre­pare to re­open, the Steel Work­ers’ Union said yes­ter­day that it re­mains un­aware of the specifics sur­round­ing the project.

“Peo­ple may take of­fence to it, but we are in the dark as a stake­hold­er but if some­one is go­ing to restart the fa­cil­i­ty and cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment for cit­i­zens in T&T, there is noth­ing oth­er than giv­ing sup­port to that,” the union’s pres­i­dent, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Bai­ley said he wrote to the PM seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the de­vel­op­ment but has not re­ceived any re­sponse.