China: HBIS's 7 mn t Laoting Steel to commission from Sept

Hebei Iron & Steel Group Co (HBIS) is planning to gradually commission its greenfield steelworks Laoting Iron & Steel Co (Laoting Steel) in Laoting, a coastal county in Tangshan city, North China's Hebei province next month, according to an August 21 announcement from HBIS's Shanghai-listed arm.

Laoting Steel is a new steelworks formed through the relocation of two HBIS subsidiaries - namely Xuanhua Iron & Steel Co (Xuangang) in Xuanhua city, also in Hebei, and Tangshan Iron & Steel Co (Tanggang) in the downtown area of Tangshan - at the urging of the two cities' governments.

Laoting Steel will eventually operate three 2,922 cu m blast furnaces, two 200-tonne converters and three 100-tonne converters, a Laoting government post in June last year mentioned.

The rolling capacity includes a 2,050mm hot-rolling mill and a 2,030mm cold rolling mill, two electro-galvanizing lines, one hot-dipped galvanizing line, four high-speed wire rod mills, one bar rolling mill and a combination longs mill that can produce both bar and bar-in-coil, according to the post.

The total pig iron, crude steel and finished steel capacity will be 7.32 million tonnes/year, 7.47 million t/y and 7.1 million t/y. According to HBIS's announcement last Friday, by the end of this year facilities to produce 1.55 million t/y of hot metal, 1.48 million t/y of crude steel and 1.42 million t/y of finished steel are scheduled to commission.

All operative steel facilities at Tanggang's existing steelworks are scheduled to be shut down from September onwards. These include a 3,200 cu m blast furnace, two 55-tonne converters, two 55-tonne LF refinery furnace, and billet, section steel and bar rolling mills, according to the announcement.

Tanggang had already stopped a 2,000 cu m blast furnace, a 3,200 cu m blast furnace, three 150-tonne converters and slab and hot-rolled coil and wire rod rolling facilities, as stated in the announcement.

A cold-rolling mill in use by Tanggang will remain in the area after the relocation, the announcement said.

Tanggang, established in 1943, boasts 7.04 million t/y of iron and 6.84 million t/y crude steel and 11 million t/y of finished steel capacities. Its closure will result in a loss of up to Yuan 38.5 billion ($5.6 billion), which will be subsidized by the local government via reallocating the land to the company through a sale-compensation process, Mysteel Global learnt from the announcement.

As part of measures aimed at reducing atmospheric pollution is both urban centres, the Xuanhua government had earlier vowed to free the city of steelmaking capacity while the Tangshan government intended to move all steelmaking facilities out of its downtown area, as Mysteel Global reported.

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.