Our History:
Serving the country since 1965
SteelAsia fuels the Philippine growth story. With an annual production capacity of over two million metric tons and growing, it pursues steel self-sufficiency and national development.
1965
SteelAsia is a company born out of a partnership that started in 1965. Filipino businessmen Benito Yao and Go Kim Pah (founder of Equitable Bank) joined forces to create a rolling mill called Island Metal.
The small rebar facility eventually bloomed into one of the world’s largest and most modern rebar manufacturing companies today.
1980’s
In the late 1980s, under the leadership of successor Benjamin Yao, the company began to expand and modernize its manufacturing capability. He spearheaded the expansion in Meycauayan, Bulacan that tripled the company’s steel production output.
1990’s
Under the younger Yao’s leadership, the company continued its push to modernize, putting up a second rolling mill in Meycauayan with 360,000 tons per year (tpy) capacity and finding a strategic partner in the National Steel of Singapore.
The project was meant to establish the Philippines’ first state-of-the-art steel bar rolling mill. Driving the endeavor, SteelAsia Manufacturing Corporation envisioned a facility that would be a national asset. World-class steel products and services would lower the cost of construction and help spur economic growth.
When the mill - a showcase of European technology - was commissioned in 1996, it was a statement to the ASEAN steel community that the Philippines had finally joined the ranks of modern industrialization.
The company later introduced value-added services with offsite rebar fabrication that provided greater ease and safety to construction projects.
2000’s
By 2000, SteelAsia was the country’s biggest rebar manufacturer under the leadership of Yao. It continued to expand, buying steel plants in Calaca, Batangas (2007); Carcar, Cebu (2009); and Villanueva, Misamis Oriental (2014). In 2014, SteelAsia opened the country’s biggest and most modern rolling mill to date in Davao City. It has also broken ground for another plant in Cebu, this time in Compostela town.
With a total capacity of over two million tons a year and an employee base of nearly 3,000, SteelAsia has been named the Philippines’ flagship steel company.
Today
SteelAsia today plays a crucial role in national development.
Around one of every two steel bars installed in construction is manufactured by SteelAsia. It supplies more than 80% of the steel bar requirements for land, air, sea, power, and communications infrastructure and is the preferred supplier of the largest contractors and property developers in the Philippines.
It is vertically integrated, both upstream and downstream, having the largest and most modern steel billet-making facility and the largest rebar fabrication plant in the country. With six plants operating across the archipelago, it is adding two more among the world’s largest and most modern steel bar mills to meet the needs of today’s unprecedented economic growth.