To facilitate production expansion and upgrade operations, China Steel Corp. (CSC), Taiwan’s largest integrated producer of steel products, will issue US$20 billion of corporate bonds in 2012.

Despite the economic doldrums, CSC’s major subsidiary—Dragon Steel Corp.—will expand blast-furnace facilities, financing such move by raising paid-in capital by NT$16 billion via a private-equity placement, with CSC to fully subscribe the 1.6 billion common shares to be issued.

Dragon will invest NT$120 billion and NT$80 billion in building the No.1 and No.2 blast furnaces, respectively, each of the which will have annual capacity of 2.5 million metric tons of steel products.

In addition to domestic investments, CSC is also evaluating the feasibility of investing in Southeast Asia.

Also CSC’s board of directors has recently approved to have vice president C.Y. Sung replace incumbent president C.H. Ou, who will retire on Feb. 1.

CSC chairman J.C. Tsou noted Sung has played a major role to help Dragon expand blast-furnace facilities that will definitely be instrumental for CSC to raise international competitiveness.