China’s Taishan Steel Commences Construction of Shandong’s Biggest CRC Stainless Steel Project

According to the reports, Taishan Steel Group Co, the only sizeable stainless producer in East China’s Shandong province has just started constructing an 800,000 tonnes per year stainless cold rolling mill adjacent to its existing stainless hot-rolling mill in Laiwu district, Jinan city of Shandong.

Shandong Taishan Iron & Steel Group launched the project with an investment of 3 billion yuan (USD 448 million) and the project is expected to be commissioned by the end of this year.

Upon completion, the project can produce an annualised 800,000 tonnes of high-end stainless steel cold-rolled plate with a width of 800-1600 mm and a thickness of 0.25-2.5 mm.

Shandong Taishan Iron & Steel Group Co is a large state-owned enterprise group that integrates many industries such as energy, machinery, commerce and trade, high technology and iron and steel production. It has annual production capacity of 3 MnT of fine steel plate and strip and 600,000 tonne of stainless steel.

Taishan Iron and Steel Group’s main production line includes:

• One hot-rolled narrow-band production line with an annual output of 800,000 tonne
• One hot-rolled coil production line with Japanese JIS standard with an annual output of 1.6 MnT
• Six pickling and cold-rolled coil production line with an annual output of 1 MnT
• One stainless steel production line with an annual output of 600,000 tonne
• One stainless steel thermal annealing pickling line with an annual output of 600,000 tonne

In 2017, Taishan Steel became China’s largest independent stainless steel mill for 400 series stainless steel varieties. In China, the current 400-series stainless steel stainless steel varieties accounted for only 20%, while in Japan and other countries, the proportion was more than 45%, which means there’s a great room for further development for China’s 400 stainless steel.

Stainless steel demand in China

China has been the world’s largest producer of stainless steel since 2006, accounting for more than 50% of production worldwide in 2018, up from just 12.9% in 2005.

As per China’s industry experts, China has great potential in terms of demand growth as its domestic consumption of stainless steel per capita is around 14.35 kilograms which is much below the developed countries in U.S. and Europe. Government efforts to boost infrastructure - such as the “One Belt, One Road” initiative - and increased consumer spending power is likely to maintain the rate of growth in Chinese consumption of stainless steel over the coming years.

source: SteelMint