ASWAN, Egypt, May 22 (AFP) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday opened Egypt's first private steelworks factory being built with US, French, German and Italian know-how at a cost of about one billion dollars. The Aswan iron and steel company near the southern city of Aswan is expected to begin production in 2001 to produce initially 1.4 million tonnes of steel annually. The US company US Steel, Cegelec of France, Mannesmann of Germany and Pomini of Italy will take part in building the factory and are expected to market 40 percent of the total production output when it is fully online. They began construction alongside their Egyptian partners in October, with total investments estimated at 3.2 billion pounds (around one billion dollars). The company chairman, Mohammad Bahgat of Egypt, told the government press on Saturday that the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank had agreed to loan his firm 420 million dollars. The factory is located 40 kilometers (24 miles) southwest of Aswan in a region estimated by the authorities to contain 310 million tonnes of iron ore, including 180 million tonnes of proven reserves. These reserves will allow the factory to churn out five million tonnes of iron each year over the next 80 years, officials said. The private company ADEMCO which will run the factory was set up at the end of August and has a 30-year concession to extract iron ore in the Aswan region, 900 kilometers (558 miles) south of Cairo, officials said.  