Pakistan Association of Large Steel Producers (PALSP) has urged the government to take all necessary measures to curb the menace of the production and sale of substandard steel in the country.
In a letter addressed to the Federal Minister for Science and Technology Agha Hassan Baloch and Federal Secretary Ghulam M. Memon, Secretary PALSP has lamented that due to non-enforcement of standards put in place by Pakistan Standard and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), around 40 to 50 percent of the total market remains flooded with substandard steel bars in the country.
According to PALSP, a major chunk of substandard steel that is being produced in Pakistan enters into the nation’s infrastructure as well as housing projects. This is a worrying situation as unchecked usage of substandard steel creates national risk for future generations by compromising the quality of the infrastructure projects of the country as Pakistan is located in a seismic zone.
The laws and standards are obvious but unfortunately are not being implemented. According to a research study conducted by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of 2005, one of the major factors for the collapse of buildings was the usage of substandard steel.
According to PSQCA Standard PS-1879-2018 for steel reinforcement bars, rebars should be manufactured by following the complete process of melting, refining, and rolling with complete temperature controls. Re-rollable scrap and scrap ship plates must not be directly re-rolled into steel bars. However, many manufacturers are blatantly violating the PSQCA laws/standards by producing sub-standard steel bars by directly rolling plates generated from the ship-breaking industry and imported re-rollable scrap into sub-standard steel bars.
According to PS-1879-2018 (Page 5): Material and Manufacture, “The bars shall be rolled from properly identified heats of mold cast or strand cast steel using the electric arc furnace (EAF) or an induction furnace (IF) coupled with ladle refining furnace (LRF) basic oxygen, or open-hearth process from quality meltable steel scrap or its substitute or combination of both. Material of re-rolling scrap and from ship breaking industry is excluded for direct rolling.”
There are a large number of mills that are producing bars directly from the re-rollable scrap as well as from ship plates. This is a direct violation of the PSQCA standards for rebar production. The rebars/steel bars produced from re-rollable are of inferior quality and cannot be exported because they are converted into bars without following the proper process.
PALSP urged the ministry and PSQCA to intervene and to take urgent measures to stop the production and sale of sub-standard steel and enforce PSQCA rules and standards. It hoped that the issue, which is of great national importance, would be accorded the highest priority. It added that if this matter remains unaddressed, it would be a recipe for de-industrialization of the steel industry as it makes the major steel makers bleed, as a result of which future investments will get discouraged in the sector.
The association also urged the ministry to recommend that entry in the initial public offering (IPO) relating to re-rollable scrap and its description be deleted or place it in the negative list on the basis of environment, safety, and health reasons and also on the basis that re-rollable scrap doesn’t come under the purview of raw materials required for the production of steel bars as per international standards. Further, re-rollable scrap is also not listed under Brussels Nomenclature.
