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Sebastian Langendorf, CEO and Managing Director of JFE MERANTI (theceomagazine.com)
JFE Meranti | Company Profiles | APAC Outlook Magazine
JFE, Meranti join for Myanmar HDG Venture
Kallanish Newsletter | Tuesday, 01 November 2017
Japan’s JFE Steel will join with Singapore-based Meranti Steel in building a galvanising and colour coating joint venture in Myanmar’s Thilawa Special Economic Zone, the companies tell Kallanish. While the galvanising line is planned to begin operation in 2020, the colour coating line could enter into operation slightly sooner.
The plant will have 180,000 tonnes/year of hot dip galvanising capacity and a 100,000 t/y colour-coating line and will see a total investment of around $85 million, according to a JFE Steel press release. The venture, JFE Meranti Myanmar, would be held by a Singapore-based holding company, which in turn would be owned by JFE Steel (35%), Meranti (20%), JFE Shoji (15%), Marubeni-Itochu Steel (15%) and Hanwa (15%).
JFE notes that Myanmar steel demand has increased steadily since democratisation in 2011 and is expected to continue to grow. Currently most steel products are imported but there is a wave of ongoing investments in steel processing and fabrication, much of it centred on the Thilawa zone.
Meranti had previously said it was looking to open a galvanising line in the zone with a twin pot system to enable both zinc and zinc-aluminium coatings. It said at the time that around 80% of output would be sold domestically and the rest exported.
Joint Venture Launching To Produce Flat Steel Products
Myanmar Business Today | Wednesday, 08 November 2017
Tokyo — JFE Steel Corporation, Meranti Steel, JFE Shoji Trade Corporation, Marubeni-Itochu Steel, and Hanwa Co, announced today their agreement to form a joint venture to produce and sell hot-dip galvanized and colored flat steel products for the building and construction sector in Myanmar.
The five companies will establish a manufacturing and sales company, JFE Meranti Myanmar Co. Ltd., in Myanmar through a Singapore-based holding company, JFE Meranti Myanmar Holding Pte. Ltd. The joint venture will seek approval from relevant authorities to construct a new plant, and aim to launch operations in 2020. The plant is to be located in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ) with a total investment of approximately $85 million US dollars, according to a joint press release.
Since democratization of Myanmar in 2011, economic development has progressed dramatically. The demand is rapidly expanding for flat steel products for building and construction, such as roofs, walls and structures. Currently, most of these steel materials have to be imported, but the need is expected to rise for locally produced high-quality products supported with technical services and short lead times. The demand will increase as foreign companies increasingly enter Myanmar and build manufacturing plants, and as customer preferences shift to higher-end products as the standard of living rises.
The new joint venture aims to promptly launch its lines for hot-dip galvanization and coating to capture the increasing demand for high-quality thin-plate building materials. This will be the first project in Myanmar focused on manufacturing high-grade galvanized flat steel products.
Meranti is a venture company with abundant knowledge of flat steel products for building and construction, for which it has conducted detailed studies and marketing in Myanmar. The new joint venture plans to maximize customer satisfaction by leveraging the manufacturing technology and quality-control know-how of JFE Steel and the overseas networks of JFE Shoji, MISI and Hanwa.
JFE Engineering, a member of the JFE Group, is already conducting a wide range of infrastructure-related businesses in Myanmar. JFE now looks forward to contributing to further economic development in Myanmar with its flat steel products for the country’s building and construction sector.
Myanmar Summary:
JFF Steel Corporation, Meranti Steel, JFF Shoji Trade Corporation, Marubeni-Itochu Steel နှင့်Hanwa Co. Ltd တို့ပူးပေါင်းလျက်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ဆောက်လုပ်ရေးသုံးသံပြား၊သံဘောင်များကိုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ထုတ်လုပ်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်းသိရသည်။
အဆိုပါကုမ်္ပဏီငါးခုသည်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ထုတ်လုပ်၊ရောင်းချရေးကုမ်္ပဏီJFF Meranti Myanmar Co., Ltd. ကိုစင်ကာပူအခြေစိုက်JFE Meranti Myanmar Holding Pte., Ltd.မှတစ်ဆင့်တည်ထောင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်းသိရသည်။
သက်ဆိုင်ရာအာဏာပိုင်များထံမှခွင့်ပြုချက်ရသည်နှင့်သီလဝါစက်မှုဇုန်တွင်စတင်တည်ဆောက်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကာ၂၀၂၀ခုနှစ်တွင်စက်ရုံကိုစတင်လည်ပတ်ရန်ရည်မှန်းထားကြောင်းသိရသည်။
၂၀၁၁ခုနှစ်မှစတင်ကာမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ဒီမိုကရေစီပြုပြင်ပြောင်းလဲရေးများစတင်လုပ်ဆောင်ခဲ့ပြီးနောက်စီးပွားရေးသိသိသာသာတက်လာခဲ့ပြီးဆောက်လုပ်ရေးများအတွက်သံပြား၊သံဘောင်လိုအပ်ချက်များမြင့်မားလာခဲ့သည်။
လက်ရှိတွင်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွက်လိုအပ်သောသံပြား၊သံဘောင်များကိုပြည်ပမှဝယ်ယူတင်သွင်းနေရြ့ပီးနောင်တွင်ပြည်တွင်းတွင်စျေးကွက်လိုအပ်ချက်မြင့်တက်လာဖွယ်ရှိနေသည်။ ထို့အပြင်နိုင်ငံတကာမှစက်မှုလုပ်ငန်းများမြန်မာနိုင်ငံသို့ဝင်ရောက်လာသည့်အခါတွင်စက်ရုံ၊အလုပ်ရုံတည်ဆောက်ရေးအတွက် စျေးကွက်လိုအပ်ချက် ပိုမိုများပြားလာမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်းသိရသည်။
ယခုပူးပေါင်းရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုမှာဆောက်လုပ်ရေးလုပ်ငန်းများတွင်ပိုမိုလိုအပ်လာနေသောအရည်အသွေးမြင့်သံပြား၊သံဘောင်လိုအပ်ချက်များကိုဖြည့်ဆည်းပေးရန်ရည်ရွယ်ကြောင်းသိရသည်။ထို့အပြင်ယခုရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုမှာ ဆောက်လုပ်ရေးသုံးသံပြား၊သံဘောင်များထုတ်လုပ်ရေးကဏ္ဍ၌မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ပထမဆုံးသောရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုလည်းဖြစ်သည်။
Meranti မှာသံပြား၊သံဘောင်ထုတ်လုပ်ရေးတွင်နှစ်ပေါင်းများစွာလုပ်ကိုင်လာသောဖက်စပ်ကုမ်္ပဏီဖြစ်ပြီးမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်စျေးကွက်ရှာဖွေရေးလည်းလုပ်ထားသည်။
JFF အုပ်စု၏အဖွဲ့ဝင်ဖြစ်သော JFE Engineering သည်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ဆောက်လုပ်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်သောစီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းမျိုးစုံကိုလုပ်ဆောင်နေသည်။
JFF သည်ယခုအခါတွင်၎င်းတို့၏ထုတ်ကုန်များဖြင့်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိဆောက်လုပ်ရေးကဏ္ဍတွင်ပံ့ပိုးပေးလျက်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်ရေးတွင်တစ်စိတ်တစ်ပိုင်းအားဖြင့်ပါ၀င်နိုင်ရန်ရည်ရွယ်ထားကြောင်းသိရသည်။
[Click here to see original article published in Myanmar Business Today]
Steelmakers among the latest Japanese investors
Myanmar Times | Wednesday, 08 November 2017
Japanese investor interest in Myanmar is likely to remain robust as the Bank of Japan continues to hold short-term interest rates at minus 0.1 percent.
With cash deposits generating negative returns at home, Japanese companies are likely to continue investing funds elsewhere, including in Myanmar.
Among the latest investors in the country are JFE Steel Corporation, Meranti Steel, JFE Shoji Trade Corporation, Marubeni-Itochu Steel Inc and Hanwa Co,which will form a joint venture to produce and sell hot-dip galvanised and coloured flat steel products for the building and construction sector in Myanmar.
The five companies will establish a manufacturing and sales company, JFE Meranti Myanmar Co, in Myanmar through a Singapore-based holding company. Once approved, the JV will begin the construction of a $85 million plant at the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
When complete and operational in 2020, the plant will be the first project focused on manufacturing high-grade galvanised flat steel products in the country.
Rising demand
JFE Meranti Myanmar sees demand for flat steel products used for building roofs, walls and other structures expanding rapidly on the back of economic development in Myanmar.
Currently, most of these steel materials have to be imported, but the company reckons demand will soon rise for locally produced, high-quality products supported with technical services and short lead times.
Demand will be backed the growing number of foreign companies entering Myanmar, as these investors are likely to build manufacturing plants and facilities to operate, the company said in a statement. Meanwhile, local preferences are expected to shift towards higher-end products as the standard of living rises.
JFE Meranti Myanmar will join the list of Japanese companies preparing to operate in Thilawa in the coming months. This includes car maker Suzuki, which will open a manufacturing factory in the SEZ next year.
Out the 84 projects with permission to operate in Thilawa, more than half are Japanese-run, according to the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO). Of this, 35 have already commenced operations, with 70 factories built at the end of September.
For the first six months of the current 2017-18 fiscal year, a total of $183 million in FDI has been approved for Thilawa, according to government data. In the 2015-16 fiscal year, Japanese investments in Myanmar hit its highest level at $220 million.
[Click here to see original article published in Myanmar Times]
New galv and prepaint lines planned for Myanmar
Henry Cooke, SBB Newsletter | Friday, 11 November 2016
An especially-formed company, Meranti Singapore Pte Ltd, has unveiled plans to build new galvanizing and painting lines in Myanmar (Burma). In a statement sent to Platts on Sunday it said it intends to spend US$85 million on the project. It is in talks with potential local partners to form a joint venture, as well as with suppliers of cold reduced coils from Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Korea.
The new plant will be built in the Thilawa special economic zone near Yangon (Rangoon). Production capacity will be around 180,000 metric tons/year of plain zinc galvanized and zinc/aluminum-coated coil, and 100,000 mt/y of prepainted.
Meranti said its products will be sold to the building and construction industry, whose demand for galvanized and painted sheet is forecast to grow at double-digit rates. Potential customers include pre-engineered building suppliers to foreign and local firms setting up factories or warehouses in Myanmar.
“From our market survey focused on the Yangon area, we see the building and construction market moving towards higher quality. Foreign investment that requires factories or other buildings will typically need high-quality steel, so prices in that segment are already pretty solid,” Meranti chief executive Sebastian Langendorf said in the statement.
Around 80% of the output will be sold domestically, leaving room for potential exports to regional markets, the Middle East and east Africa. The galvanizing line is expected to start production in 2019.
Meranti’s executives include people with experience working in companies including regional coated coil producer NS BlueScope, Hatch and BHP Steel.
Meranti targets $85m Myanmar galv plant
Kallanish Newsletter | Tuesday, 08 November 2016
Meranti Singapore tells Kallanish it is planning to invest $85 million in a galvanizing plant in Myanmar’s Thilawa Special Economic Zone. The project will join several others in the same zone, all targeted at Myanmar’s small but rapidly expanding steel market.
“There’s a strong market already in Myanmar and we see it growing at double digits year-on-year,” says Meranti ceo Sebastian Langedorf. The Posco Research Institute has said that Myanmar’s steel demand could more than double to around 4.77 million tonnes by 2025.
The company plans to sign a reservation agreement with the zone operator Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development at the start of 2017 and could see the plant begin production in 2019. The plant is envisioned as having a dual pot system to allow both zinc and zinc-aluminium coatings. 80% of output will be sold domestically with the remainder potentially exported to the Middle East or East Africa.
The Thilawa SEZ is also home to several other steel investments. Japanese steel exporter R&K Trading is in the process of commissioning a 120,000 t/y fabricating plant in the zone, while Thailand’s Millcon Steel and General Engineering, and Vietnam’s PEB Steel also both plan fabrication plants there.
Singapore firm plans Thilawa galvanising plant (Myanmar Times)
By Steve Gilmore | Friday, 04 November 2016
Amid booming demand for high-quality construction materials, Meranti Singapore is planning to build a steel galvanising plant and paintline in Thilawa special economic zone. The firm intends to spend US$85 million on the facility, and is in discussion with the SEZ operator and potential local partners, its chief executive told The Myanmar Times.
“We’re in advanced discussions with [operator] Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development and plan to sign the reservation agreement at the beginning of next year,” CEO Sebastian Langendorf said. The firm is also looking for a local and international partner for what will be a joint venture project. “There will be one local partner and for an international strategic partner we’re talking to steel and trading companies that will help us get the raw materials,” he said.
Meranti was established specifically to set up a factory in Thilawa. The planned factory will galvanise and paint imported steel, with sales focused mainly on the domestic Myanmar building and construction market. Galvanisation involves coating steel, in the case of Meranti Singapore with zinc and zinc aluminium, to prevent rusting and corrosion.
“There’s a strong market already and we see it growing at double digits year-on-year,” said Mr Langendorf. Around 80pc of the finished steel will be sold domestically, leaving room for potential export to regional markets, the Middle East or even East Africa, he added. “We see exports as a way to fill capacity,” he said. “We know the [export] markets are there, but we need to assess export conditions on an ongoing basis.”
It will take years for the plant to be fully operational, with the galvanising line expected to start production toward the end of 2019. But this will give the high-quality market Meranti is focused on time to grow.
“From the market survey we’ve done with customers mostly in the Yangon area we see the market moving towards higher quality,” he said. “Foreign investment that requires factories or other buildings will typically demand high-quality steel, so prices in that segment are already pretty solid.” Potential customers could include pre-engineering building suppliers that cater to foreign and local firms setting up factories or warehouses. Although many foreign firms have production facilities abroad, companies including Coca-cola and carmaker Suzuki produce domestically.
The Singaporean firm’s plant is also an example of the kind of benefits special economic zones are designed to bring – allowing more complex and higher value-added production to happen domestically. “In terms of productivity it’s a giant leap,” said Mr Langendorf. “The heat treatment and chemical processes that produce [galvanised steel] are extremely complicated, even within the steel value chain.
Meranti is in discussion with Yangon Technological University and Thanlyin Technical University for internship and employment opportunities, he said.
[Click here to read about the original article published in the Myanmar Times.]