With its mission to build a full-fledged steel industry that will replace imports, generate jobs, and create new business opportunities upstream and downstream all over the country, SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp. said it is aligned with other industries in promoting inclusivity by providing equal job opportunities to members of indigenous peoples' tribes.

“We have 13 Aetas and Remontado IP, among our 95 recruits since 2023. For trainee recruitment, we connect with different LGUs, barangays, out-of-school youth (OSY) centers, and IP offices,” said Rafael Hidalgo, senior vice president for business development at SteelAsia.

The Aetas are known to have originated in Pampanga and the northern part of Luzon, while the Remontados are of mixed blood; hence, they have a combination of Negrito and lowland Filipino features.

“We've been told by those who entered our training program that this is the first time they have had an opportunity like this offered to them,” he added.

Further, Hidalgo stressed that some of the workers in its plants need not be graduates of engineering or four-year courses, so long have the adequate skills, we can hire them,” said Hidalgo.

SteelAsia has thousands of workers in all its sites in Calaca, Batangas; Carcar City and Compostela in Cebu; Meycauayan City in Bulacan; and Villanueva in Misamis Oriental.

Hidalgo further said that the company's aim to produce more workers goes with its quest to establish SteelAsia as the country’s largest steel company and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of rebars.

“We see our growth in the Philippines as a multi-decade growth. When you put up manufacturing, you should aim for that growth. The country right now has a demand for steel and somebody has to do it as the government is supportive of it,” Benjamin Yao, chairperson and CEO of SteelAsia, told the members of the media in Mactan Cebu during the plant tour in its Compostela, Cebu manufacturing site on Thursday.

SteelAsia’s current project is to build the country’s first sections mill in Lemery, Batangas to produce H-beams for infrastructure and large angles for transmission and cell towers.

These steel products are 100 percent imported like most others that are used in construction and infrastructure projects.

SteelAsia is a company born out of partnership that started in 1965, founded by Filipino businessmen Benito Yao and Go Kim Pah (founder of Equitable Bank), who 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.

The legacy of Yao is being continued by Benjamin, in which 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 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.