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China aims to further trim its steelmaking capacity “substantially” as well as to curtail steel output so as to reduce power consumption and carbon emission in the long term, Xiao Yaqing, head of China’s Ministry of Industry and Technology (MIIT) reiterated again at a recent press conference, according to a MIIT sharing on March 3.
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Inner Mongolia in North China, now the country’s second-largest coal mining region after Shanxi in North China too and with the most competitive power charges, mulls blocking any new industrial projects including steel, coke, ferroalloys, non-ultra-high electrode graphite and aluminium starting 2021, aiming to rein in on the region’s power consumption mainly by such industrial plants, according to a draft by its Development and Reform Committee.
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JFE Shoji Corporation, a trading company under Japan’s second largest integrated mill - JFE Steel group – has just commissioned its second coil processing plant at its existing coil distribution center in Hai Phong city of north Vietnam recently in February to cope with the probably growing demand for steel sheets in the ASEAN country, JFE Shoji announced on February 18.
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PT Gunung Raja Paksi Tbk (GRP), one of the largest privately-owned steel mills in Indonesia, plans to commission its first-ever 580 cu m blast furnace in the second quarter of this year if the construction work progresses according to plan, a company official shared on February 17.
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PT. Dexin Steel Indonesia (Dexin Steel), a Chinese-invested greenfield steelworks in Indonesia’s Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) in Central Sulawesi province last week blew in the second of a pair of 1,780 cu m blast furnaces, completing the commissioning of both production lines in the mill’s first-phase project, according to a company post on February 4.
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By the end of 2020, stocks of carbon steel hot-rolled, cold-rolled and coated coils and sheets at Japan’s steel producers, coil centers and distributors remained largely stable at about 3.56 million tonnes, up only 0.5% or 19,000 tonnes on month but being the first rise in seven months, according to the latest data by Nippon Steel on February 4.
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Japan’s crude steel output including both carbon and special steel is estimated to rise by 7.8% on quarter to about 23.7 million tonnes over January-March, according to a survey released by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) on February 3, indicating the further improvement in steel demand.
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Taiyuan Iron & Steel Group (TISCO), now a subsidiary of China Baowu Steel Group and China’s second largest stainless steel producer in North China’s Shanxi province, aims to expand into a 25 million tonnes/year steel mill by 2025 with 18 million t/y being stainless, the company disclosed when sharing its five-year development plan over 2021-2025.
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Nippon Steel, Japan’s top integrated steel mill, has divested from Guangzhou Pacific Tinplate Co. Ltd. (PATIN), a 200,000 tonnes/year tinplate joint venture in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong province by December 2020, and it will afterwards focus on the other invested tinplate plant in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, according to its statement on January 27.
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The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among China’s 247 steel mills still hovered at above 90% despite having dipped for the third week over January 15-21 by another 0.12 percentage point on week to 91.12%, as a few more furnaces had been under the annual maintenance the period, according to Mysteel’s survey.
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Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest integrated mill, has restarted a banked blast furnace at the Kashima Area of its East Nippon Works in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo. The steelmaker is responding to improving domestic steel demand, mainly from the country’s auto and machinery sectors, it said.
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New vessel orders received by Japanese shipbuilders during the calendar year of 2020 declined by 19.8% on year to 7.33 million gross tonnes in 146 vessels, or the second year posting with an on-year drop, according to the latest data released by the Japan Ship Exporters’ Association (JSEA) on January 18.
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Scrap utilization in steelmaking among the 211 Chinese steel mills Mysteel tracks regularly, grew by 1.36 percentage points on month in December to about 24% on average, according to Mysteel’s latest monthly survey charting scrap consumption among Chinese steelmakers. The survey covers integrated and electric-arc-furnace (EAF) steel producers and those mills using both blast furnace and EAF technologies.
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China’s electric-arc-furnace (EAF) steel mills will face challenges this year, as the tight supply-demand balance for steel scrap will likely persist, despite Beijing’s resuming qualified steel scrap exports starting January 1, and the probably remaining high domestic steel scrap prices will also weigh on the EAF plants’ profits and cool the mills’ enthusiasm in commissioning new EAF capacities, according to Mysteel’s annual report.
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China’ largest special steel producer CITIC Pacific Special Steel Group Co (CITIC Pacific) has bid for a 40% stake in Shanghai Electric Group Steel Tube Co (SEGST), which will enable CITIC Pacific to access the latter’s 3.5 million tonnes/year seamless pipe capacity in North China’s Tianjin should the deal go through, according to the CITIC Pacific’s release on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on January 6.
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No one would have expected the steelmaking raw materials prices including iron ore, coke and scrap to have attempted multi-year highs in December, a usual off season for steel consumption and production, but the year 2020 had been proven anything but normal, and many iron ore traders ended their 2020 in frustration, as iron ore prices shot up for seemingly no reason at all.
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Nippon Steel has decided to massively increase its shareholding in the Thai maker of tinplate and tin-free steel, Siam Tinplate Co., Ltd. (STP) to give the Japanese steel giant near full management control over the maker, Nippon Steel announced on December 24.
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Nippon Steel has announced it signed a definitive agreement with ArcelorMittal (AM) on December 22 to jointly build a new electric arc furnace at their US 50:50 venture AM/NS Calvert LLC in Alabama in the southern United States.
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Nippon Steel Stainless Steel Corp (NSSC), Japan’s largest stainless producer, has decided to lift its December-February list prices for 300-series wire rod (January-March roll) to reflect higher nickel prices, the company confirmed on December 22. The price for 304 grade wire rods will be higher by Yen 15,000/tonne ($145/t), but that for NSSC’s 400-series rods will remain unchanged.
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Japan’s sales of carbon steel products for both the domestic market and exports in October fell 6.1% on year, and the total volume for the first ten months of 2020, thus, declined 3.4% on year to about 46.4 million tonnes, according to the latest data released by the Japan Iron & Steel Federation (JISF) on December 16.