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Local steel maker SteelAsia and its chief executive officer Benjamin Yao have been named finalists in the two top categories of the prestigious Platts Global Metals Awards.
SteelAsia is among five finalists for the Steel Industry Leadership award, while Yao is shortlisted for the CEO of the Year award.
SteelAsia is the Philippines’ leading steel company and the largest manufacturer of steel bars in South East Asia.
SteelAsia is in the running, along with Nucor Steel, the largest steel producer in the United States; AK Steel, a 115-year-old US company that is the producer of automotive steel; EVRAZ, Russia’s second largest steelmaker and an industry giant employing more than 80,000.
Yao, meanwhile, is in a field that includes Saijin Jindal of JSW, India’s second-largest steel company, and Oleg Bagrin of NLMK, Russia’s largest steelmaker.
The awards are given by S&P Platts Global, a leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets, with customers in over 150 countries.
S&P Platts Global honors and recognizes companies and individuals that motivate the metals industry to new paradigms, and embody excellence in leadership, innovation, safety, integrity and overall performance.
The 2017 Platts Global Metals Awards will be presented at a black-tie gala attracting metals industry leaders from around the world on May 18, at Marriott Grosvenor Square in London.
SteelAsia is an industry pioneer. In 1996, it began modernizing the Philippine steel industry by introducing the rolling mill technologies accepted worldwide as standard.
The company now operates six steel mills – three in Luzon, one in Cebu and two in Mindanao – that together produce some 2 million tons of steel.
It is currently expanding to integrate upstream with an additional 1.7 million tons of steelmaking, and 3 million tons of rolling mills producing rebar and import substitute products such as beams, channels, wire rods and merchant bars.
Yao steered SteelAsia to its leading position amid Chinese oversupply and dumping into South East Asian markets
Pushing customer-centric, value-adding activities, and a nationalistic spirit within its communities to support its own industries, SteelAsia has helped roll back the Philippine market share of Chinese rebar imports to a negligible 1 percent last year (2016), from 2 percent in 2015.
The results have been marked increases in revenues, margins and profitability.
Yao has made critical investment decisions to invest and expand in an unfriendly business environment with the confidence that SteelAsia can continue to outpace both local and foreign competition by building on platforms of productivity, customer centricity and an inclusive model of doing business.