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On March 5, China released its series of development targets for 2022 including the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at about 5.5% on year, and all these have clearly confirmed the pressure that the world's second largest economy expects to feel in softening demand, increasing supply and weakening market sentiment, as Beijing has reminded ever since the start of this year.
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A systematic study of China's domestic steel prices over 2001-2021 may enable the country and the very industry to identify some patterns that Beijing can refer to when drafting its guidelines for the development of its steel industry and economy in the years to come, as steel is rather elementary for infrastructure construction, automakers, shipbuilders, home appliance manufacturers, and property developers.
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Many ferrous market sources are wondering how much further the seaborne iron ore price will decline in the near future now that on February 15, the price lost around $10/dmt, and the most-traded iron ore contract on Dalian Commodity Exchange also hit its daily limit down during the daytime trading session on Tuesday, both in response to the intervention of the country's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) via the means of stern warnings and talks with some major traders.
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In the first week after the Chinese New Year (CNY) break, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has been busy with stabilizing the prices of a few industrial and agricultural products such as iron ore, coal and pork.
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China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a series of posts on the performance of the country's various industrial sectors including steel, nonferrous metals and some downstream industries such as shipbuilding and machinery manufacturing on January 30, which provided a glimpse of the pressure the downstream industries withstood last year mainly from the soaring costs in their raw materials.
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Despite that China, the largest buyer of iron ore, was still in the middle of celebrating the Chinese New Year (CNY), Mysteel SEADEX 62% Australian Fines jumped $7.2/dmt on February 3 to $145.1/dmt CFR Qingdao, which to me, has repeated the pattern in the past couple of years, suggesting that the country's steel market will probably be on a bumpy road in the near term especially with all the positive and negative factors present at the market.
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With Beijing's call for higher self-sufficiency in steelmaking raw materials via increasing steel scrap utilization, domestic iron ore resources exploration, and overseas iron ore investments, does this suggest the arrival of the second golden era for the Chinese iron ore mining industry after the first robust period over 2003-2014?
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The years before 2010 China would have been exhilarated at its annual auto sales exceeding 15 million units, considering it a spectacular milestone, while by 2021, the country had topped the world for the 13th year in auto sales with the volume at 26.27 million units, according to the latest data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
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With the second COVID-19-struck year having come to an end globally, a brief review of the performances in China's manufacturing sector and the steel industry alone over 2020-2021 shows that the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the former had been in expansion except for February 2020 and September-October 2021, while that for the latter had been in contraction except for an expansion in May 2020, which may be surprising to some market participants.
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Chinese New Year officially begins in just over a month on February 1, the time of the year when many Chinese seek psychic help to learn what the new year may hold. 'Suan ming' fortune-telling, the calculation of fate is a risky business at the best of times but just now, for the country's steelmakers, the uncertainties facing them would make even the most gifted oracle pack up his Qiqin sticks and take a holiday.
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For 2021, it has been rather normal to see that all China's key official data such as foreign trade and economic performance have been compared with 2019 other than with 2020, simply as on-year comparison could be misleading given that last year had been anything but a normal year with China having battled fiercely against the outbreak of COVID-19 in most of the first quarter.
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Despite the self-initiatives by individual steel mills globally to cut down carbon emission in their steelmaking, government policies will be crucial to make sustainable and fundamental changes in decarbonization, speakers agreed on November 22 at the 2021 SEAISI Sustainability & Construction Fortnight e-Event.
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China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has publicized the detailed draft guidelines for related regulatory bodies to effectively scrutinize the operations of pricing index providers of key commodities so as to "nurture an orderly and healthy development for such pricing indices", according to a notice shared by NDRC's Department of Price on October 25.
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China's steel output has been onto the downtrend since July, as Beijing has shifted the gear to rein in national production since the start of the second half after being rest assured that country's economic growth target would be at no risk with the achievement in H1, and the slow-downs in steel output growth among its top 10 production bases had been more substantial than nationwide by September.
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Tata Steel’s resolution to returning to the Indian market is for real, and after another two years of looking hard for a buyer for its Singapore subsidiary - NatSteel Holdings Pte Ltd, it finally signed a deal with TopTip Holding Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based iron ore and steel trading house, for the latter to take the full ownership of the steel mill.
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I have not seen so many congratulatory messages and comments about a marriage between two Chinese steel mills since 2004 - the year I started the ferrous market news coverage - until August 20 when a formal announcement was released regarding Ansteel Iron & Steel Group (Ansteel)’s formal takeover of Bengang Group (Bengang), both in Northeast China’s Liaoning province and being state-owned though the former ultimately owned by the central government and the latter belonging to the provincial authority.
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It has been a known fact that China has been promoting hard the sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) and more eco-friendly and energy-saving models, but it has not occurred to me how thorough China’s related governing bodies can be to ascertain that those qualified models are rightfully granted tax reliefs or waivers while leaving no loopholes for the other vehicles that are not up to the standards to abuse the benefits.
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People tend to link the words “dirty”, “dusty”, and “hot” with a steel plant in China, which may well be the reality 20-30 years ago, but if you have the opportunity to visit a steel plant in the world’s largest steelmaking country just like us on July 30, you will probably “wow” and “ah” throughout the whole tour of Baoshan Steel’s works located on the outskirts of Shanghai, a steel plant belonging to the world’s top steelmaker – China Baowu Steel Group(Baowu), marveling at its tidiness and high automation.
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China’s power supply has been under serious test since the start of 2021, firstly in winter because of the extremely cold weather in some regions together with the surging power consumption in many industrial sectors as a result of heavy government spending and fixed asset investments to cushion the domestic economy from the blow of the COVID-19.
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China released all its key economic development data for the first half of 2021 by last week, and related governing organizations also held press conferences to explain the key points of the data on the day of releases where senior officials emphasized the country’s economic growth had been further optimized and is heading towards the desired track via the heavy reliance on the country’s huge domestic market.
