The Al-Mukalla Iron and Steel Factory “misc”, located in Al-Rayyan area in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout Governorate, east of Yemen, has been closed.

A commercial source attributed the reason for the closure of the factory to the failure of the local authority in Hadramout to provide a private power station with the fuel that powers it, which is the station owned by the Bajarsh Commercial Group, which also owns the Mukalla plant.

The source close to the management of the Mukalla plant told Al-Mashahid, “The financial costs of supplying the iron and steel plant in Mukalla with fuel to operate the plant were exorbitant, in addition to the local authority obliging the Bajarsh Electricity Company to supply other areas with electricity at the expense of the electrical energy allocated to the operation of the plant. This prompted the factory management to bear the employees ’salaries for two months, as well as the costs of operating expenses of the factory, thus exposing the factory to a cumulative loss.

The processing of the Mukalla Iron and Steel Factory began in 2011, but the plant launched a trial operation to produce the first batch of rebar in December of last year.

The factory provided job opportunities for more than 400 jobs for young people, and was operating at a production capacity of 500,000 tons annually, with a daily capacity of 1500 tons.