I've had this discussion around why we export iron ore and coal rather than steel. Which seems ridiculous to me. Why are we building huge port facilities for vast shipments of coal and iron ore, and not smelters with much smaller port facilities for shipping steel?

The answer I got was that smelters are hugely expensive and last longer than the mines, and so it makes sense to build the smelter near the factories, and ship the raw materials to the smelter from wherever they are being mined currently, rather than building the smelter near the mines and then having to ship raw materials there anyway once the mines run out. I've always thought this was a bit dubious (why is commercially viable to build smelters in Korea but not Aus?), but it does kinda make sense.

So the problem isn't "not enough excess power" but "insufficient infrastructure" coupled with "insufficient government willpower to build a decent manufacturing base here".