Af­ter sev­en years in lim­bo, the iron and steel plant in Point Lisas is ex­pect­ed to re­sume op­er­a­tions next year af­ter an agree­ment was signed for TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny Ltd to ac­quire the fa­cil­i­ty.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, TT Iron con­firmed yes­ter­day it had signed a sale and pur­chase agree­ment with Christo­pher Kelshall, the liq­uida­tor of Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas Ltd. (In Liq­ui­da­tion).

The re­lease said the com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to ap­proval by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad & To­ba­go.

Last year, the Guardian re­port­ed the planned pur­chase of the plant by TT Iron, with the com­pa­ny hop­ing to start pro­duc­tion of bil­lets and coils through the melt shop.

TT Iron said ini­tial re­fur­bish­ment and restart of the plant is ex­pect­ed to cost US$150 to 200 mil­lion (be­tween TT$1 bil­lion and TT$1.4 bil­lion) over the next two years with fur­ther in­vest­ment re­quired there­after.

On the is­sue of the price the prospec­tive own­ers are pay­ing for the plant, the news re­lease said: “This is a pri­vate trans­ac­tion, bound by con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments.”

The com­pa­ny al­so stat­ed its in­ten­tion for the plant to use re­new­able en­er­gy go­ing for­ward.

TT Iron said: “The plant his­tor­i­cal­ly used nat­ur­al gas how­ev­er TT Iron in­tends to tran­si­tion to green hy­dro­gen in the com­ing years as it be­comes com­mer­cial­ly avail­able. This will re­duce the plant’s car­bon in­ten­si­ty to 0.4 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel pro­duced. Restart­ing the iron and steel plant and then tran­si­tion­ing to green hy­dro­gen will put Trinidad and To­ba­go back on the map as a world leader on the cut­ting edge of low emis­sion steel pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy.”

TT Iron said the re­fur­bish­ment is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate 1,000 jobs, while the plant should pro­vide long-term em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­nites for 500 peo­ple.

Some 644 peo­ple be­came un­em­ployed in March 2016, when Arcelor­Mit­tal opt­ed to shut down op­er­a­tions at the plant fol­low­ing a dis­pute over the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply re­quired to run it.

TT Iron founder, pres­i­dent, and CEO Gus Hiller said: “We be­lieve there is great po­ten­tial for the plant to re­turn to the fore­front of glob­al steel­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy and per­for­mance. Our team was drawn to Trinidad and To­ba­go due to its strate­gic lo­ca­tion, skilled work­force, po­ten­tial to be a hy­dro­gen leader and an en­abling busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. We are con­fi­dent we will be able to bring on stream and op­er­ate an ef­fi­cient, cut­ting-edge steel mill which we ex­pect and hope will start pro­duc­tion with­in the next 12 to 18 months; cer­tain­ly, no lat­er than De­cem­ber 2024.”

Hiller is a vet­er­an of the steel in­dus­try and spent six years of his ca­reer on the Point Lisas es­tate at the helm of Nu­cor. He has man­aged and op­er­at­ed steel plants across US and Cana­da.

Chair­man of TT Iron Joel “Mon­ty” Pem­ber­ton said: “The restart of the lo­cal steel in­dus­try con­tin­ues the vi­sion of the Trin­bag­on­ian pi­o­neers who con­ceived it, and we are en­hanc­ing this vi­sion with the full use of green hy­dro­gen in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame; this is the fu­el of the fu­ture.

“TT Iron is pas­sion­ate about the de­vel­op­ment of the down­stream man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor of high­er val­ue iron and steel prod­ucts in Trinidad & To­ba­go, this will fur­ther in­crease em­ploy­ment and wealth cre­ation in the coun­try. Our ESG prin­ci­ples are an­chored in pro­duc­ing low­er car­bon prod­ucts, the pro­mo­tion of en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T through the de­vel­op­ment of the down­stream man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, es­tab­lish­ing an ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme for youth de­vel­op­ment, there­by cre­at­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment for gen­er­a­tions in the clean en­er­gy in­dus­try.”

Liq­uida­tor Christo­pher Kelshall said he was pleased that TT Iron op­er­a­tions in­clud­ed plans for the de­vel­ope­ment of T&T.

“Es­pe­cial­ly with the fu­ture use of green hy­dro­gen. The in­vest­ment by ex­pe­ri­enced in­dus­try vet­er­ans, will see Trinidad & To­ba­go con­tin­ue to be a cred­i­ble play­er in the glob­al steel in­dus­try. Fur­ther, this in­vest­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to con­tin­ue to di­ver­si­fy the down­stream en­er­gy in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Kelshall.