CONF: China's SS capacity stable at 37 mln t/y in 2018
China’s stainless steel industry will remain its capacity largely unchanged at 37 million tonnes/year for 2018 as against 36 million t/y in 2017, though it may grow steadily afterwards with new projects to replace existing facilities with low efficiency, Liu Yanping, Secretary General of Stainless Steel Council of China Special Steel Enterprises Association, said at the 3rd China Ferrous Derivatives International Conference in Shanghai on June 21.
As for output, China’s stainless production is likely to grow 5-6% for 2018, Liu predicted. Over January-March, China’s stainless output grew 6.51% on year to 6.53 million tonnes.
The country’s steel exports, however, are with growing difficulties in 2018 with the existing imports barriers from the US, Europe, and Taiwan and at the same time higher output from Indonesia, Liu admitted.
In 2017, China’s stainless steel imports grew 63.5% on year to 1.21 million tonnes, mainly because of the new stainless projects commissioned in Indonesia with abundant and very affordable nickel supplies, Liu explained, and the imports may see further increases in the coming years, market sources agreed.
China, nevertheless, remained a net exporter of stainless steel over 2010-2017 though the net export volumes had been shrinking over the years.
China’s stainless industry has been with relatively low capacity utilization rate, which was at 71.6% for 2017, but it has been making progress in optimizing its finished steel structure in the past few years, with the proportion of 200-series low-quality stainless output down for the first time in 2017 and 300-series products a higher 52.1% to the total output, she summarized.
In 2017, the 300-series proportion increased by 1.78 percentage points on year, while that for the 200-seried fell 1.76 percentage points to 27.87% of the total, as reported.
Moreover, “it is worth noting that the output of duplex stainless steel surpassed 100,000 tonnes to 101,959 tonnes in 2017, which, though, still being small in comparison, is very encouraging and important to China’s stainless steel industry,” she pointed out.
The concentration in China’s stainless steel industry has improved remarkably too, benefiting from Beijing’s efforts in excessive steel capacity cuts and environmental protection, and the top ten stainless steel producers nowadays contribute to nearly 80% of the country’s total production.
China has been the world’s top stainless consumption country since 2001, and its per capita stainless consumption volume multiplied over the year, up to 14.35 kg/person in 2017 as against 1.763 kg/person, or up 7.7% on year, according to Liu.
Written by Rebecca Zhu, rebeccazhu@mysteel.net.cn
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
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