Campaign vs substandard steel products intensifies

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Iron and Steel Institute (PISI) is strengthening its campaign against substandard steel products as the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has started confiscating products from hardware stores that are not compliant to product standards.

“The DTI and the private sector are intensifying their campaign against substandard rebars, angle bars and unmarked and unregistered bars that have been flooding the market of late. The unprecedented act of seizing the inferior products sends a strong signal to the errant manufacturers and hardware stores,” PISI president Ronald Magsajo said in a statement.

Last month, the DTI’s provincial office in La Union confiscated substandard steel products from a hardware store and warned a repeat of the offense would have consequences for the retailer.

Magsajo said the DTI recognized the need to take stronger action against substandard products following PISI’s test-buy operations.

He said PISI would step up its test-buy operations to continue to find substandard steel products being sold in the country.

Over the past months, PISI has been deploying teams for test-buy operations and providing the suspect sample products to the DTI, which then sends such to the Metals Industry Research and Development Center (MIRDC) for analysis.

MIRDC has found several samples from the test-buy operations fail to meet product standards in terms of weight and size.

Steel products with unregistered marks or are unmarked were also found during the test-buy operations.

Without marks, it is difficult to trace the source or maker of the products.

“The pandemic has made people price-sensitive and some unscrupulous manufacturers have been taking advantage of this. So PISI and the DTI have to step in to protect the public,” Magsajo said.

He said additional teams would be deployed to more areas.

“We believe that we have just scratched the surface of this problem. These products are either smuggled but largely locally made from factories that have been cropping up using the induction furnace (IF) technology China banned in 2017 for being a major source of smog in Beijing and its surrounding areas,” he said.

He said there were only about five IF factories in the country with a capacity of 200,000 metric tons (MT) four years ago, but the number has risen to 13 with a capacity of one million (MT) with the China ban.

As such, he said the growing trend must be stopped to protect the public and the environment.