Austrilia's BlueScope Steel Ltd will open a flat steel metallic coating and painting facility in Suzhou today to tap increasing Chinese demand.

The facility cost 280 million Australian dollars (211.1 million U.S. dollars) and is the company's biggest manufacturing facility in Asia.

The plant is located at the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province, 80 km west of Shanghai.

The new midstream facility has an annual metallic coating capacity of 250,000 tons and painting capacity of 150,000 tons and will provide employment for approximately 300 local people, according to a company statement.

It will produce a range of products for China's rapidly growing building and construction markets as well as supply BlueScope's own downstream network of operations, the statement said.

The plant "enables us to produce tailored product offerings to respond even more quickly to market developments and opportunities," the statement quoted Kathryn Fagg, the company's president for Asian building and manufacturing markets, as saying.

A Shanghai analyst said foreign steel companies had more opportunities to make high-end and tailored products in the Chinese steel market.

Last month, French steel pipe maker Vallourec SA said it would build a plant to make products to serve China's oil and gas companies in Changzhou, which is also in Jiangsu Province.

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