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As the demand for liquid medical oxygen (LMO) mounts in the battle against the devastating second wave of Covid-19, court orders, circulars from district collectors and verbal urgings from state officials are seeking augmentation of supply of this life-saving gas from the iron and steel industry. The ways and means include diversion of industrial oxygen to hospitals as LMO, mill closures and production curbs on secondary sector mills and hand-over of empty cylinders for O2 refills.
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Despite the market’s fast and furious reaction to last week’s news of production curbs being imposed on steelmakers in Handan city in North China’s Hebei province, as of Tuesday morning mills in the city were generally keeping their production steady, according to local industry sources there.
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Integrated steel plants are throwing a lifeline to severely impacted Covid patients. From PSUs Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited to private producers Tata Steel and JSW Steel to Vedanta and more, all are pitching in with liquid medical oxygen (LMO) even as new infections breach the 3.33 lakh per day level.
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Japanese steelmaker and plant builder Kobe Steel has announced the first successful charge of Hot Direct Reduced Iron (HDRI) produced by a new DRI plant constructed in Algeria and supplied by Midrex Technologies, Inc. Kobe’s wholly owned subsidiary in the US, with its consortium partner Paul Wurth S.A based in Luxembourg.
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Shougang Group, a tier-one steel mill in China, expects its Shenzhen-listed arm to achieve a 405-457% on-year surge in the net profit in the first quarter, mainly as its two steel plants in Tangshan, North China’s Hebei, have both been exempt from the ongoing restrictions with their “exceptional efforts in pollution control”, a Beijing-based source close to the steel mill shared last Friday.
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There might have been some wavering at the start but blast furnace steelmakers in Tangshan, China’s top steel producing city, seem to have quickly realised their local government is committed to enforcing tough new restrictions on their operations to improve city air quality. Mysteel’s latest survey shows that during the two weeks since the government announced that all but two of the city’s mills must slash production, the capacity utilization rate of the 126 local blast furnaces had plummeted to a 20-month low of 58.5% as of April 1.
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Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest integrated mill, plans to develop technologies for a large-scale electric-arc furnace mill (EAF) and will start installation around 2030 as a part of the company’s ‘Carbon Neutral Vision 2050’ project, it announced on March 30. The EAF will replace one of its existing blast furnaces, but further details are not decided, it said.
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China’s steel sector has been targeting to reach its carbon emission peak by 2025, or five years ahead of the country’s target for the whole economy, and by 2030, it aims to cut carbon emission further by 30% from 2025, the domestic steel market has been circulating an action plan proposed by the industrial participants.
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The latest emergency restrictions, though lifted on March 15, has warned the steel producers in Tangshan - China’s top steelmaking city – to be prepared for more frequent and intensified curbing for the rest of 2021 especially when the city is determined to shake off the negative image as one of the country’s ten most polluted cities among the 168 under Beijing’s monitoring, market analysts maintained.
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A most serious sandstorm in a decade has attacked most of North and Northwest China on the morning of March 15, closely following a heavy smog for the previous few days, and logistics services in the ferrous community have been slowed down with traffic lights being hardly visible in some areas, market sources grudged on the morning of March 15.
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The world’s third largest iron ore miner BHP, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China’s HBIS Group Co (HBIS), a top-tier steel mill with all the core steelmaking facilities in North China’s Hebei province, agreeing to invest $15 million in total in the next three years to research and explore technologies and pathways that will mitigate greenhouse gas reduction in the steelmaking.
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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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Production at steel mills, fabrication companies, mines and logistics enterprises in North China are preparing for some disruption to their business over the coming two weeks as Beijing plays host to thousands of visiting party members and officials for the year’s two most crucial political events convening this week.
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China Baowu Steel Group (Baowu), the world’s and the country’s top steel producer, has been the first in China’s steel industry to pledge realizing carbon neutral by 2050, or ten years ahead of China’s targeted timeline as a country, Chen Derong, Baowu’s chairman, disclosed in an interview with China’s media.
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Tangshan Q235 150mm square billet price, the bellwether of China’s steel market sentiment especially in North China, soared to its over nine-year high of Yuan 4,140/tonne ($641/t) EXW and including the 13% VAT by February 19, or up Yuan 290/t in total from February 2, the last day Mysteel updated the price before the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday over February 11-17.
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China’s steel mills can make a breakthrough in the iron ore fundamentals in five years if they are looking at the right direction such as increasing their shares in the overseas iron ore mining operations, Xu Xiangchun, Mysteel’s senior analyst commented on February 1.
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Beijing has been working quietly on carbon emission cuts for a few years but its open pledge in 2020 to peak the country’s carbon emission by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 has undoubtedly imposed more pressure publicly on the steel industry, the country’s second largest carbon emission source only after the thermal coal power generation.
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Six major integrated mills have been recognised by the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) as being the first to meet tough new ‘ultra-low’ emission standards laid down for the industry as part of the country’s drive to achieve cleaner steelmaking. For most of the six, CISA’s accolade has been achieved at considerable financial cost in environmental protection facilities, though the mills will be in a position to recoup some of their outlay with the help of preferential policies, Mysteel Global notes.
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On December 16 China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released a draft version of the “capacity swap” scheme for the domestic steel industry, listing the detailed guidelines to adhere to for the installation of all the new domestic iron- and steelmaking capacities, and this long-awaited document has been viewed by market insiders as the new code of conduct to shape the country’s steel industry in the future.
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Nippon Steel Engineering, the engineering arm of Japan’s largest steel producer, has received an order from Taiwan’s China Steel Corp to supply a large Coke Dry Quenching (CDQ) plant, NSE announced on November 26.
