Saudi Arabia’s Saham Steel is to move ahead with a planned $240m steel plant at Jubail Industrial City (JIC) after being allocated gas and land for the project.

The company has been allocated around 100,000 square metres of land at Jubail and secured 1 million cubic feet a day of gas.  

“Now that all the paperwork has come through, we can push ahead with this project,” says a spokesman for Saham Steel. “We are looking to begin implementation in the next three months.”

The spokesman adds that discussions regarding equipment procurement, as well as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to build the facility have already started, but no deal has been made yet.

“We welcome discussions with all interested parties,” the spokesman says. “We are looking at starting production in 2014.”

The scope of works for the project includes a billet caster that will have a capacity of 900,000 tonnes a year (t/y) and a rolling mill 550,000-t/y of steel rebar that will be sold to the domestic construction industry.   

The company is also planning to part finance the project with a loan from the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF).  

The plant is the latest in a number of high-profile steel projects that are now starting to move forward in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s Al-Rajhi Steel is planning to develop a $3bn fully integrated steel complex at the King Abdullah Economic City, north of Jeddah (MEED  25:3:11).