In what ap­pears to be a ma­jor coup for the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, fi­nal­ly the Iron and Steel Plant at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate is set to restart pro­duc­tion un­der new own­ers and could lead to the cre­ation of hun­dreds of high pay­ing jobs.

The Busi­ness Guardian has con­firmed from mul­ti­ple sources, and has seen doc­u­ments that show that all is in place for the restart of the plant, pend­ing fi­nal ap­proval from the Cab­i­net, which is due to con­sid­er it to­day.

The pro­posers are hop­ing that Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les will fi­nal­ly take the note to Cab­i­net so that T&TEC can pro­ceed to ne­go­ti­ate a pow­er pur­chase agree­ment with T&T Iron and Steel.

The liq­uida­tor Christo­pher Kelshall has giv­en his ap­proval for the plant to be trans­ferred to the new own­ers T&T Iron and Steel, the com­pa­ny has al­ready signed a term sheet agree­ment with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd for an ini­tial nine mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day (mm­scf/d) start­ing in 2023 and in­creas­ing to 55 mm­scf/d when it is in­to full op­er­a­tions by 2025/2026.

The Busi­ness Guardian has been told that the plan is to start off with the Melt shop and pro­duce bil­lets and coils. This wil be done us­ing scrap iron, both lo­cal­ly sourced and im­port­ed. The use of scrap iron could be a so­lu­tion to the present stand­off as there will not be a need to ex­port any scrap iron, as it could be now used in the steel plant.

While this is hap­pen­ing, Busi­ness Guardian has seen plans to re­fur­bish the DR 3 plant in time for the 2024 when ad­di­tion­al nat­ur­al gas is ex­pect­ed to be made avail­able to the steel plant.

In 2024 the plan is to make Di­rect Re­duced Iron (DRI) and there­fore phase out the use of scrap iron. DRI is a clean­er process and will pro­duc­er a bet­ter grade of Steel and fetch bet­ter in­ter­na­tion­al prices as well. Fol­low­ing the 2024 start up of the DRI 3 plant, the plan is to re­fur­bish DR 2 plant for start up ear­ly 2026.

It is ex­pect­ed that the steel plant will have few­er em­ploy­ees than the Arcelor Mit­tal plant that em­ployed on a dai­ly ba­sis up to 2,000 work­ers, us­ing main­ly con­tract em­ploy­ees. The pro­po­nents of T&T Iron and Steel ex­pect to em­ploy be­tween 700 and 1,000 peo­ple.

Ini­tial­ly it pro­posed to see 250 per­ma­nent jobs be­ing cre­at­ed.

This is like­ly to be a ma­jor shot in the arm for the gov­ern­ment, be­cause it would see high qual­i­ty jobs be­ing cre­at­ed, it will lead to sig­nif­i­cant­ly more elec­tric­i­ty be­ing sold, with an es­ti­mat­ed to­tal pow­er re­quire­ments of 240 mega watts a day or 17 per cent of what the en­tire coun­try us­es at the mo­ment. This would help T&TEC’s fi­nances, it will lead to more fees be­ing paid to Na­tion­al En­er­gy for port ser­vices and to al­low Plipdec­co to col­lect sig­nif­i­cant rent.

The Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has been round­ly con­demned for the ini­tial clo­sure of the plant and the fail­ure to pro­tect work­ers.

Orig­i­nal­ly build by the then gov­ern­ment of Dr Er­ic Williams, the iron and steel plant has had its share of ups and down and it was Arcelor Mit­tal’s chair­man and CEO, Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal who even­tu­al­ly in 1994 pur­chased the plant for US$70 mil­lion, but in 2016 af­ter fail­ing to get nat­ur­al gas and elec­tric­i­ty rates at prices it want­ed, Mi­tal sim­ply closed the plant and left. It meant the 600 plus per­ma­nent work­ers, many who have since died, lost their jobs with­out get­ting a cent as sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits.

This re­al­i­ty is not lost on the mind of the Pres­i­dent of the Steel Work­ers Union of T&T, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley who blamed cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour with help­ing Mit­tal leave the coun­try with­out pay­ing work­ers ben­e­fits by find­ing loop­holes in the leg­is­la­tion, which have still not been fixed.

“A por­tion of the work­force has gone on in terms of re­tire­ment and some have died, and some­thing that has nev­er been ad­dressed, and I hope that this is touched on, is al­though a new en­ti­ty is com­ing to re­open, and I will have a lot to say about that, not that I don’t want any en­ti­ty to re­open, be­cause it is good for the coun­try, it is good for the econ­o­my, it will be good for the work­ers, my is­sue is peo­ple tend to be­lieve that be­cause time has past things are for­got­ten.

“The same leg­is­la­tion that ex­ist­ed in 2016 that al­lowed Mit­tal to leave this coun­try with­out pay­ing work­ers any sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to­day, Regi­nald Ar­mour is the per­son that guid­ed Mit­tal to find the loop­holes in our leg­is­la­tion to al­low work­ers to go home af­ter 36 years with­out any mon­ey,” Bai­ley ar­gued.

He claimed this pro­pelled to more deaths of work­ers over­come by stress.

‘All kinds of dis­eases peo­ple nev­er had be­fore come up, be­cause you home, no as­sis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, no as­sis­tance any­where, you have mort­gages, you have fam­i­ly to sup­port you have wives ba­si­cal­ly, and you have de­mands at the end of the day, and you can’t ful­fil it be­cause you have in­vest­ed your whole life in a com­pa­ny which was al­lowed to get up, leave our shores and is cur­rent­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing a liq­ui­da­tion process. If that not crim­i­nal, I want some­body tell me what is crim­i­nal.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Pres­i­dent of the Steel Work­ers Union the re­open­ing of the plant will re­quire a sig­nif­i­cant amount of re­train­ing of work­ers.

“Def­i­nite­ly re­train­ing and reskilling will be need­ed, even for those who have gone out­side of the es­tab­lish­ment, be­cause you have to re­mem­ber the plant has been closed since 2016, so def­i­nite­ly we will need some reskilling, you are go­ing to need re­train­ing.”

On the ques­tion of whether the union ex­pects to rep­re­sent work­ers once the steel plant re­opens, Bai­ley said he ex­pects a lev­el of push­back but as­sures his union is ready to rep­re­sent the work­ers.

He ex­plained, “The recog­ni­tion cer­tifi­cate nev­er ex­pires. There is an­oth­er no­tion that they could do cer­tain things and make it more dif­fi­cult, case in point Petrotrin to Her­itage, they may at­tempt to do the same thing, get mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies in­volved to breaks from the recog­ni­tion cer­tifi­cate cov­er­ing work­ers, but we will be ready and will­ing to as­sist the com­pa­ny, if the com­pa­ny has good in­ten­tions, and ob­vi­ous­ly, we are ready, will­ing and able to rep­re­sent our mem­bers.”