Zhong Shaoliang, chief representative of the Beijing office of the World Iron and Steel Association, said at a forum on Wednesday that due to the special impact of the epidemic, China’s stainless steel output is expected to rise to 60 percent or even higher this year, keeping its position as the world’s largest.
China 2020 Stainless steel and Special alloy New Material Industry High-end Forum was held in Yancheng, Jiangsu province on June 15.Zhong pointed out that, in general, the development of the world’s stainless steel industry depends on Asia, because Asia accounts for 71% of the world’s stainless steel production;And Asia’s industry development depends on China, because China accounts for about 80% of Asia’s stainless steel production.
He pointed out that this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, steel production and demand in other countries have dropped, and stainless steel companies have cut production. However, China’s economy has been the first to recover, and steel output has risen instead of falling, and the proportion of stainless steel output in the world is expected to rise to about 60%.
Li Xinchuang agrees.He pointed out that China’s stainless steel output reached 29.4 million tons in 2019, 2.6 times 2010’s output, accounting for 56.3 percent of global output, and the proportion is expected to rise to about 60 percent this year.
Although it has been the world’s largest producer for many years, experts believe that the steel industry still faces many challenges.
Taking stainless steel as an example, Li Xinchuang pointed out that the nickel and chromium resources, the main raw materials of stainless steel production in China, are highly dependent on imports, among which the nickel ore is more than 80% foreign dependent.Chromium ore is limited by domestic resource conditions, external dependence is close to 100%.This leads to a weak guarantee of resources in the stainless steel industry, and vulnerable to price shocks in the international market.
The potential demand for stainless steel in China is still large.At present, China’s per capita consumption of stainless steel is 17 kilograms, far lower than Germany, Japan, Italy and other manufacturing developed countries (per capita 25-45 kilograms), Li said.It is predicted that the demand for stainless steel in China will reach about 30 million tons by 2025.
In order to ensure the safety of the industrial chain, Li suggested that more resources should be explored in China to increase production capacity as far as possible.At the same time, encourage active “go out”, expand the scale of equity mines;In addition, the reserve system of chromium and nickel ore should be established as soon as possible, so as to ensure long-term safe supply of chromium and nickel ore resources.
