By 1985 heavy industry was producing only 35 percent of its 1973 output. The main branches of this sector were the assembly of vehicles; production of steel bars and tubes, zinc sheets, and other metal products; assembly of radio and television sets; and manufacture of tires, batteries, paper, and chemical products. There have been large investments to rehabilitate steel production. Nevertheless, although imports of steel dropped from more than 58,000 tons in 1980 to 35,000 tons in 1986, Angola still imported most of its finished steel goods, including tubes, sheets, and plates.
In 1983 the government established a company to process scrap metal. The Northern Regional Enterprise for the Exploitation of Scrap Metal, located in Luanda, had the capacity to process 31,000 tons of scrap metal and produced 7,125 tons of processed scrap metal in 1985, its first year of operation. The government claimed that the efforts of this enterprise had saved US$1.4 million that would have been spent on importing scrap metal. The government planned to establish another company in Lobito, with the financial support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
The government also controlled the automobile assembly industry through a company founded in 1978 after a Portuguese firm had been nationalized. The company consisted of a factory that assembled light vehicles; a plant, possibly at Viana, that assembled buses and heavy trucks; and a factory at Cunene that built the chassis for all these vehicles. The light vehicle factory was particularly affected by the cutback in imports in 1982, and its output fell in 1983-84 to only 20 percent of capacity. Likewise, the bus and truck plant has experienced shutdowns because of a lack of parts. Inputs for the automobiles came from state-owned companies that produced paint, plastic seats, metal tubing, and rubber tires.
Data as of February 1989