Sinosteel and Bolivia jointly invested a steel plant, adjacent to Mutun iron ore mine, and funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. It was originally expected to begin construction this April, with a 30-month construction period, and the project cost totaled US$546 million.

Sinosteel worked on preliminary investigations this June, but due to delays in local government administrative procedures, construction progress was not started until the end of November.

The first phase of construction project included an iron mine with annual capacity of 650,000 tons, an iron ore pellet plant, a direct reduction iron plant with annual capacity of 250,000 tons, and a continuous casting and rolling plant producing long steel products with annual capacity of 190,000 tons.

In the second phase, a plate casting machine with annual capacity of 450,000 tons will be expanded. In the third phase, annual capacity of the long products will be increased to 450,000 tons, and capacity of the plate will be raised to 550,000 tons.