BLOG: Two mills showcase ‘green’ growth of Chinese steel

Chinese steel works have an image problem. Rarely does a month go by without news of a local government somewhere – though usually in North China – launching measures targeting reducing pollutant emissions or reinforcing environmental protection facilities among steel enterprises.

Air quality in the country’s steelmaking hubs of Tangshan and Handan of Hebei is consistently among the poorest nationwide, as ranked monthly by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, suggesting that the industry’s reputation for shirking its environmental responsibilities is justified.

To be fair, though, not all Chinese steel mills are dusty and dirty.

“Chinese mills are much cleaner than I’d expected!” admitted a clearly surprised steel industry official during a visit to the works of Jiangsu Yonggang Group (Yonggang) and Jiangsu Shagang Group (Shagang), two large mills in East China’s Jiangsu province located about 116 km north-west of Shanghai.

The foreign mill official was among a group of over 50 visitors from Japan, South Korea, Netherlands, United States and China to pay a visit to the two steelworks as part of the Asia Steel Forum 2019 over September 18-19 in Shanghai. Arriving at the carbon and specialty steelmaker Yonggang after traveling for two and a half hours from the downtown Shanghai, visitors were immediately impressed by the brand new and advanced facilities, and their efficient layout.

Established in 1984, Yonggang in Nanfeng Town in Zhangjiagang, boasts a 9 million tonnes/year crude steel capacity. With over 10,000 employees, it produces and sells wires rod, rebar, bar-in-coil, bearing steel, gear steel, and other products.

After a brief introduction to the company, visitors were guided to its steelmaking shop and cast house where the 1 million tonnes/year capacity EAF-based plant is producing 380-800mm blooms. Nearby is the 800,000 t/y rolling mill for 75~350mm dia round bars.

“The length of the production line – from roughing mill through precision rolling and finally cut-to-length – is 550 meters, and during the process, the temperature can be as high as 900 degrees Celsius,” the official explained.

“The size of the mill and advanced level of production facilities are very impressive,” an engineer from the Netherlands admired, adding, “by comparison, our mill’s plant components are more widely disbursed, and the equipment is older.”

A delegate from Japan where steelmaking technology is well recognized for its eco-friendliness and advancement admitted that Yonggang’s facilities are on par with those in steel mills in Japan.

Visitors had an equally eye-opening experience at Shagang Group’s Zhangjiagang works, located about 18 km from Yonggang’s plant.

Being China’s largest privately-owned steelmaker, Shagang Group – comprising the Zhangjiagang works and three other worksites across Jiangsu and Henan provinces – boasts 45 million t/y of steel capacity with Zhangjiagang hosting some 25 million t/y, and the group claims to employ 30,000.

At Shagang’s entrance with golden statue “S”, the company logo.

As the two buses full of visitors wheeled through the gateway at Shagang, the company’s guide explained that the works sprawls to 15 sq km, with a main boulevard dividing the steelmaking plants on the right and rolling plants on the left. Though popularly referred to as the country’s largest EAF steelmaker, Shagang also hosts three 2,500 cu m blast furnaces and one 5,800 cu m furnace – the latter being the world’s second largest after the 6,000 cu m furnace at South Korea’s POSCO at its Gwangyang works.

Shagang hosts three wide and thick heavy-plate mills with a total capacity of 6 million t/y, and the visitors were ushered into the 5,000mm plate mill for a brief walk-through.

The slabs from the continuous caster into Shagang’s 5,000mm heavy plate mills.

In fact, belying the view that all Chinese steel mills are dirty, Yonggang’s construction is also neat and green, with the company’s representative saying the firm started building a ‘garden’ factory seven or eight years ago. Indeed, when the tour buses entered the works, the first impression of visitors was “it is not just a steel mill, but a part of Yonglian village” – the world-famous tourist attraction in Zhangjiagang consisting of modern farms, a river town and a garden steel factory, Yonggang.

In fact, to “live” amongst more than 10,000 villagers shows just how green the mill is. On route to the plant the buses crossed small bridges built among willow trees and over cool flowing water. At lunch at the works, the fresh food served nearly all came from the farm, the official mentioned.

The surprise did not stop at the plants and when the visitors arrived at Shagang’s own berths at the Zhangjiagang port on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, they were welcomed with the fully-covered coal storage silos. “China’s central government requested steel mills to fully enclose all the raw materials storage facilities last year,” a company official explained.

Shagang’s ports along the riverbank

The fully-covered coal storage silos opposite Shagang’s ports

Shagang has been using the berths for steel exports and to receive and unload most of its imported raw materials. “Our port terminal stretches over 10 km along the riverbank,” he said.

Other than completely covering coal from the naked eye, Shagang’s efforts to minimize air pollution from raw materials stocking also stretch to building roofs over iron ore and scrap stockyards. And Yonggang, as a subsidiary of Shagang, has been on a similar route, investing heavily in installing covers over its raw mats yards which visitors could see from afar, silhouetted against the beautiful clear sky with clouds floating.

Yonggang’s cover over raw mats yards.

Since 2006, Shagang has invested over Yuan 6 billion ($843 million) in developing environment-related projects including the addition of 49 eco-friendly production projects, according to the company’s official website.

It may still take a few more years for more “garden” steel plants to emerge in China, but Beijing’s greater emphasis on environmental protection since 2016 has already seen the initial results, and the few showcases such as Nanjing Iron & Steel, Shagang, Yonggang are offering glimpse of China’s steel industry future.

The portrait wall of Yonggang’s employees and the residential zone.

Written by Anna Wu, wub@mysteel.com, Zhiyao Li, lizy@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com, Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com