The iron and steel plant that was once owned by in­ter­na­tion­al steel gi­ant Arcelor­Mit­tal at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Cou­va is still not up and run­ning de­spite hav­ing new own­ers.

On June 7, 2023, TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny an­nounced it had signed a sale and pur­chase agree­ment with the liq­uida­tor of Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas Ltd, Christo­pher Kelshall, to ac­quire the iron and steel plant on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The news re­lease then stat­ed that ini­tial re­fur­bish­ment and restart of the plant was ex­pect­ed to cost US$150-200 mil­lion (TT$1-1.4 bil­lion) over the next 24 months with fur­ther in­vest­ment re­quired there­after.

Founder, pres­i­dent, and CEO of TT Iron, Gus Hiller, said the com­pa­ny be­lieved there was great po­ten­tial for the plant to re­turn to the fore­front of glob­al steel­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy and per­for­mance.

“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. The restart of this plant will cre­ate a long-term sus­tain­able in­dus­try that gen­er­ates se­cure em­ploy­ment and wealth for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go for gen­er­a­tions to come,” said Hiller, in the June 2023 news re­lease.

Ques­tioned on Fri­day about the de­lay in start­ing up the fa­cil­i­ty, TT Iron chair­man Mon­ty Pem­ber­ton con­firmed that the iron and steel plant is not up and run­ning, but he was not pre­pared to pro­vide a time­line as to when that might hap­pen.

“We are work­ing dili­gent­ly to ex­pe­dite the safe start-up of the plant. These things do not hap­pen overnight and the over­all poli­cies and pro­ce­dures of the plant have to be up­dat­ed as this fa­cil­i­ty has been down for more than nine years. It takes time to up­date poli­cies and pro­ce­dures, which we are do­ing from the ground up. And we will not start any work on the plant un­til we are sure that every­thing is in place to en­sure safe and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion,” said Pem­ber­ton.

The en­er­gy ex­ec­u­tive said he was not pre­pared to com­ment on the pro­pos­al by the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion to im­pose tar­iffs on iron, steel and alu­mini­um im­ports in­to the US.

“But, let me point out, that there are no tar­iffs on steel im­ports in Cari­com or in the wider Caribbean, in­clud­ing the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic,” said Pem­ber­ton.

As it per­tains to whether the liq­uida­tor has been paid in full for the plant, Steel Work­ers Union of T&T pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, who rep­re­sent­ed the Arcelor­Mit­tal work­ers, told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, “The last of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion we have is the liq­uida­tor is still owed by the en­ti­ty. But those par­ties are best equipped to an­swer that ques­tion as of the date of this in­ter­view.”

Re­spond­ing to that claim, Pem­ber­ton said the fi­nal pay­ment for the plant is not due as yet. He de­clined to pro­vide any fur­ther de­tails, cit­ing the fact that TT Iron is pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny.

Sources told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the liq­ui­da­tion process is not ful­ly com­plet­ed as there are mat­ters be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court con­cern­ing the Steel Work­ers Union and the lay­ing off of the work­ers and at the High Court and Privy Coun­cil with var­i­ous com­mer­cial mat­ters.

Pem­ber­ton said TT Iron has “no line of sight” with re­gard to pre-ex­ist­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues in­volv­ing the work­ers of the Arcelor­Mit­tal plant com­plained of by the trade union rep­re­sent­ing those work­ers.

Bai­ley said 644 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees were laid off and to date no set­tle­ment pack­ages have been giv­en to them, some of whom worked at the fa­cil­i­ty for 36 years.

The iron and steel fa­cil­i­ty was com­mis­sioned in 1980 by for­mer prime min­is­ter of T&T, the late Dr Er­ic Williams. The fa­cil­i­ty was leased to Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal in 1989 af­ter record­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in loss­es. It was then sold to Mit­tal in 1994 for US$70 mil­lion. Mit­tal Steel merged with Arcelor in June 2006.

Bai­ley in­di­cat­ed that March 11, marked nine years since the Arcelor­Mit­tal fa­cil­i­ty was shut­tered.

“At this point, the union on­ly has Arcelor­Mit­tal be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court where we await judg­ment on the ter­mi­na­tion of the work­ers,” he lament­ed.

 Asked what are the ben­e­fits to the work­ers of the Arcelor­Mit­tal plant un­der the new man­age­ment by TT Iron Steel, Bai­ley said, “We are clue­less as we have not had any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pur­port­ed new own­ers of the plant. In­for­ma­tion has been very se­cre­tive about this en­tire process so we are un­aware of any ben­e­fits, if any ex­ist.”

Back in 2023, Bai­ley told Guardian Me­dia that the union was left in the dark about the sale.

Ques­tioned whether this ap­proach to the union has changed, Bai­ley said: “The ap­proach re­ferred to in 2023 has not changed, un­for­tu­nate­ly, and re­mains con­sis­tent. But we are mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments pa­tient­ly and re­main ready to sup­port any en­ti­ty that gen­uine­ly wants to re­open the steel in­dus­try in T&T.”

On whether the work­ers have been ap­proached to work at the iron and steel plant, the trade union­ist said he could not say if any work­ers have been en­gaged and un­der what terms. Such ques­tions can be best an­swered by the new own­ers, he said.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian un­der­stands that be­tween eight and 12 con­trac­tors have been en­gaged by TT Iron.

“To date, no leg­is­la­tion has been brought to the Par­lia­ment to pre­vent the re­cur­rence of the clo­sure of a plant in T&T with­out the pay­ment of sev­er­ance ben­e­fits to work­ers. We do not know if such leg­is­la­tion is com­ing now or in the fu­ture for any work­ing-class cit­i­zen of this coun­try. We are say­ing that the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate has failed and con­tin­ues to fail by not up­hold­ing its oblig­a­tion to en­sure that it pro­tects its cit­i­zens. That is part and par­cel of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Bai­ley said.

The sources could not say for sure if the re­fur­bish­ment works have be­gun but said it should on­ly take up to a year to be com­plet­ed.

“I mean, it’s a huge plant and there are a lot of mov­ing parts. But there are parts of it that could be recom­mis­sioned in less than a year,” one source said.

For the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, Plipde­co, the land­lord of the in­dus­tri­al es­tate and port at Point Lisas, de­clared $180.4 mil­lion in af­ter-tax prof­it. That was a 305.7 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $48.23 mil­lion the com­pa­ny de­clared for the nine-month pe­ri­od in 2023.

Sources said retroac­tive lease pay­ments made by TT Iron con­tributed to the sharp in­crease in Plipde­co’s nine-month prof­itabil­i­ty.

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A work­ing pa­per re­leased by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT), showed that T&T ex­pe­ri­enced in an es­ti­mat­ed av­er­age fall in non-en­er­gy ex­ports of US$259.2 mil­lion over the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2018.

Arcelor­Mit­tal is the world’s largest steel pro­duc­er, with an an­nu­al crude steel pro­duc­tion of 92.5 mil­lion met­ric tonnes as of 2018.

The work­ing pa­per ti­tled ‘Im­pact of the clo­sure of a large for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment’ said T&T’s fis­cal ac­counts would not ben­e­fit from cor­po­ra­tion tax­es, busi­ness levy tax, green fund levy, Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), and prop­er­ty tax­es with the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny.  

“Con­cern­ing in­fla­tion, while it is ex­pect­ed that iron and steel im­ports will in­crease, glob­al prices are fore­cast to de­cline and as a con­se­quence, the im­pact on in­fla­tion is ex­pect­ed to be min­i­mal,” the doc­u­ment said.