CONF: China’s prefab push calls for higher-quality rebar

“Chinese rebar producers are facing structural adjustment with the development of prefabricated building,” Chen told attendees at Steel Export Certification Training Conference co-held by Certification Authority for Reinforcing Steels (CARES) and China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) last Friday in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province.

China’s central government issued a guideline in September 2016 promoting the use of prefabricated construction techniques in concrete-, steel- and wooden-structure buildings, aiming to increase the proportion of such prefab buildings in new construction to 30% by around 2026. The present proportion is not known but in 2016 when the guidance was issued, it was just 4.9%.

Beijing issued the directive, aiming to help save energy and resources in the construction sector, reduce pollution during construction, improve work efficiency, the quality and safety of the buildings, as well as to promote recycling in the construction industry.

Chinese cities, especially those with the local population over 3 million and those in North China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, East China’s Yangtze River Delta and South China’s Pearl River Delta, are making great efforts to encourage prefabrication in housing, in high-rise buildings and apartments, and in bridges and roads, Mysteel Global understands.

“Presently, as long as the construction project is government-sponsored, it must be prefabricated,” Chen observed. Moreover, the promotion of prefabricated construction has gradually shifted the supply route for rebars from the previous “mills-traders-construction sites” to “mills-component processing plants-building sites,” she told delegates.

Such changes may propel Chinese rebar producers to expand their role beyond just providing steel products to downstream manufacturing such as the fabrication of steel wire mesh and coupled rebar. “Rebar mills, with the appropriate facilities and technologies, enjoy the advantage of turning themselves from ‘steel producer’ to ‘service provider’,” the deputy general manager said.  

Chen also warned the audience, mostly Chinese rebar producers, that the widespread adoption of prefabricated construction will require rebar producers to meet higher performance requirements in the future.

“As the central government aims to increase steel consumption in prefabricated construction, (higher quality) structural steel will be used more commonly than concrete and rebar,” she said. “Building contractors, with less rebar consumption in their projects, will be more selective when choosing the rebars they need, and all the producers should be prepared to meet the higher quality requirements for rebar.”

In China's steel consumption, long steel, primarily rebar, usually accounts for 60%, while the output accounts for around 40% of the total finished steel production, Mysteel Global understands. For 2018, China produced 422 million tonnes of bars and wire rods out of the country's total 1.1 billion tonnes of finished steel output, according to the statistics from the China Iron & Steel Association.

Written by Olivia Zhang, zhangwd@mysteel.com

Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com