KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Housing and Real Estate Developers Association (Shareda) fully supports the state government’s decision to temporary bar the export of scrap iron out of Sabah.
In response to the announcement made by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Haji Noor on Friday, Shareda president Datuk Chua Soon Ping agrees that the temporary bar will ensure sufficient raw material supply for the local steel and construction industry.
“With sufficient supply of raw material, we no longer need to import them at an inflated price, which will in turn stabilize the price of billets and rebars. Billets and rebars are key ingredients in the construction industry,” said Chua in a statement yesterday.
“When the supply and cost of construction materials are stabilized, we become less reliant on imports, the saving will be directly reflected on the house prices for the people in Sabah,” he added.
The temporary ban is also likely to encourage the growth of downstream industries to the steel industry.
Federation of Sabah Industries (FSI) president Richard Lim expresses his gratitude to the Chief Minister for looking after the interest of the local industries by taking this bold and commendable step to ensure that raw materials required to feed local downstream industries are retained in the State.
Lim in a statement on Saturday said local steel industries have been crying for years about the lack of scrap iron to feed their steel mill as more than half of scrap iron, a scarce recycled-resource generated within Sabah, is exported out of the State.
Due to high logistic costs and world-wide supply chain disruption caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, importing scrap iron in any substantial quantities to keep production going at full steam is not viable, if not impossible, he opined.
This, Lim pointed out, has led to shortage of the more competitively priced locally manufactured steel bar/rebar.
“And the need to fill this shortfall with more pricy import causes the market price level of steel bar/rebar in the State to increase sharply. This has adversely impacted the local construction industries, in particular housing developments,” he said.
Steel Industries (Sabah) Sdn Bhd welcomes the announcement made by the Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Hajiji Haji Noor that the State Government’s decision to temporary ban the export of scrap iron going out of Sabah.
Encik Azrul Bin Ahmad, Executive Director of Steel Industries (Sabah) Sdn Bhd pointed out that for the steel mill, it is a volume game and thus to ensure enough supply of raw material is utmost important.
Therefore, the price of the billets, which raw material is scrap iron has been much affected by the price of scrap iron. It impacts on the production costs and reflected in the steel bar selling price. For the past, the steel bar price in Sabah is very volatile due to the billets cost.
Recently the steel bar price has been in the uptrend due to the rising cost of billets. With the State Government’s decision, we can expect not only stable supply of billets but more so on its pricing. We are confident that this will have achieved the goal of ensuring sufficient raw material supply for the local steel & construction industry.
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