CubaPLUS Magazine

The Business Group of the Steelworking Industry (GESIME), with over 46 years of experience, today focuses its work on increasing investment opportunities in order to diversify its products and services, main pillars of the national economy.

For this reason and to provide more information on its work, CubaPLUS Magazine held a meeting with two of its main executives, mainly responsible for carrying out the plans and projections of this Higher Organization of Business Management (OSDE).

Currently, explained its First Vice President, Eng. Carlos Alejandro Estrada Fong, the group, comprising 61 companies -seven joint ventures and one budgeted with special treatment- is carrying out several investment processes that will allow the modernization, sustainability and expansion of the productive capacities of its industries, so as to meet the growing demands of domestic and foreign markets.

Likewise, he continued, the work is focused on substituting imports and developing new products, for which it has a broad portfolio of business opportunities for foreign investment in Cuba.

The group’s level of activity exceeds 10.9 billion pesos and its output has an impact on practically 100% of the sectors of the country’s economy," he said.

David Baeza Fernández, Director of Production and Services, referred to the activity of the group and pointed out that among its main products are carbon steel billets and bars and their derivatives for domestic investment and export.

He added that it also includes a variety of equipment, machinery, industrial plants, spare parts, implements and tools for different economic sectors, all high impact products that contribute directly to the group’s programs.

These also include equipment, machinery and systems for agriculture, such as sugarcane harvesters, self-propelled transporters, trailers, irrigation machines and systems, as well as a variety of agricultural implements: cultivating tillers, breaking harrows, trowels, integral disk plows and leveling blades," he said.

GESIME’s clients, continued Baeza Fernández, include food companies, for which it develops canning factories, small businesses for fruit and vegetable processing, processing plants for citrus, fruit and dairy and grain storage and drying. It also produces milk vats, water purification plants, stainless steel and carbon steel casting, and metal containers.

In the transportation sector, companies of the group produce buses, mini-buses, forklifts, motorcycles, bicycles and electric tricycles, as well as parts, pieces and components for automotive, railway and electrical equipment, he said.

To this end, the group has companies specialized in producing metal structures for different construction systems: warehouses, metal panels, palletized shelves, modular constructions with light paneling, and it also provides integral engineering, maintenance and assembly services, while supplying aluminum carpentry, elevators, shelves, roll-up doors, tubular towers and chimneys, among others, to organizations that need them.

The extent of GESIME’s supplies of equipment and services is a reflection of the diversification of its output destined for export and its projection as an organization in constant improvement, always &with an eye on the future."

Group programs

1. Agri-food and sugar.
2. Health and demographic policy.
3. Housing.
4. Transportation.
5. Tourism.
6. Investments of the Mariel Special Development Zone and the real estate company ALMEST S.A.
7. Energy and cooking.
8. Communications.
9. Sales in Hard Currency Retail Stores.
10. Ministry of Domestic Trade.
11. Defense.
12. Water Saving (Life Task).