Capitol Steel

In 1953, he started working at International Steel Mill, later to be renamed Apollo Steel Mills Inc. rising to become General Manager and eventually the President. Capitol Steel (formerly Central Steel)- a sister company of Apollo Steel and a pioneer in the Steel Industry in 1950 together with Philippine Blooming Mills and Marcelo Steel- suffered a... crippling strike in 1973. The owner, Mr. Johnny Cheng, who was also his boss moved to liquidate the money-losing venture. At that time, H. S. Cheng, who was taking up his PhD in Economics at the University of Santo Tomas proposed a turnaround business plan as part of his thesis. The owner proposed a joint venture arrangement instead and offered a majority share in the company. He remarked that better to be a partner in a profitable business than to be the sole owner of a losing business. The partnership proved to be successful. Two decades later, Mr. Johnny Cheng took over Apollo Steel and in exchange gave full ownership of Capitol Steel to H. S. Cheng. Under the leadership of H. S. Cheng, Capitol Steel supplied major projects like the Magat Dam, one of the biggest infrastructure projects of its time in the 1970s. This was followed by other dams like the Pantabangan Dam, the Ipo Dam, the La Mesa Dam and others. Capitol Steel was also one of the early adopters of ASTM A615 Grade 60, a high tensile grade used in high rise projects in the 1980s like the Citibank Tower in Makati among others. During the traffic crisis of the 1990s, Capitol Steel supplied the fast track projects of the EDSA-Ortigas Interchange, the EDSA-Buendia flyover, the C5-Kalayaan Flyover, and the Katipunan Flyover. The manufacturing plant was also upgraded with European, Japanese, and Taiwanese technology. During the 2000s, Capitol Steel worked together with Centre de Recherches Métallurgiques in Belgium to produce ASTM A706 Grade 75, a higher grade of high tensile steel. This was tested and applied in its own project, a 50,000 sqm high-rise Building in the Ortigas Central Business District. ...Read More