Busi­ness lead­ers in cen­tral and south Trinidad yes­ter­day were unan­i­mous in their views that the re­fur­bish­ment and re­fash­ion­ing of the steel plant on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate would be a sig­nif­i­cant boost to the econ­o­my of the re­gion, by gen­er­at­ing new jobs and for­eign ex­change.

Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day host­ed a rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny on the site of the Arcelor­Mit­tal plant, which shut down in March 2016. Ibis Steel is a sub­sidiary of US-based met­als and in­dus­tri­al in­vest­ment com­pa­ny, Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion.

In open­ing re­marks Pin­na­cle’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ed­win Ben­nett, said the com­pa­ny’s ini­tial in­vest­ment is planned at US$250 mil­lion and it pro­pos­es to cre­ate 350 jobs dur­ing the restart of the fa­cil­i­ty and 500 full-time jobs .

“Af­ter an ex­pan­sion in the fu­ture, we plan to spend an­oth­er US$500 mil­lion dol­lars and dou­ble the num­ber of jobs to 1,000,” said Ben­nett, adding that the com­pa­ny is plan­ning first pro­duc­tion by the end of 2027.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Bal­dath Ma­haraj de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as a ma­jor win for cen­tral Trinidad and by ex­ten­sion the wider econ­o­my.

“For one, that will gen­er­ate much-need­ed for­eign ex­change and boost non-en­er­gy ex­ports. But just as im­por­tant, that will al­so bring sol­id jobs back to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. And when peo­ple start work­ing, the con­fi­dence re­turns, spend­ing pow­er goes up, and the lo­cal busi­ness­es right here in Point Lisas and Ch­agua­nas ben­e­fit from that rip­ple ef­fect,” Ma­haraj said.

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce and act­ing pres­i­dent of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co) De­o­raj Ma­hase said the re­fur­bish­ment of the plant and the start of pro­duc­tion will have a mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect on the fence­line and na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties

“It’s not just a reg­u­lar steel plant. It lends to dif­fer­ent type of man­u­fac­tur­ing of crit­i­cal min­er­als and things like that. So it’s some­thing that is go­ing to re­al­ly gen­er­ate jobs, gen­er­ate forex and is go­ing to be a step in the right di­rec­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go,”Ma­hase said.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said the de­vel­op­ment could be piv­otal in ad­dress­ing re­cent con­cerns about un­em­ploy­ment and the down­stream in­dus­try of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“We wel­come the restart or the new in­vest­ment of steel pro­duc­tion and the down­stream in­dus­try in the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my as we go for­ward and we look for­ward to sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment. We un­der­stand that this will go to US$350 mil­lion and the em­ploy­ment rate will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ed with­in the next year or two.

Vana­di­um is a met­al that is much in de­mand in the US and the EU for the aero­space in­dus­try, for bat­ter­ies, and for the steel in­dus­try.

“Our vi­sion is to pro­duce the equiv­a­lent of 50 per cent of Amer­i­can con­sump­tion of vana­di­um. In oth­er words, 100 per­cent of the quan­ti­ty of vana­di­um that the Unit­ed States im­port,” said Ben­net.