China's Tangshan City Orders 50% Production Cuts for One Week amid Adverse Weather Forecast

As a part of the anti-pollution campaign, this year China has allowed its 28 cities government to set their own industrial output limits in the autumn-winter heating season discarding last year's blanket 50% steel output cut across these cities resulting which each city is setting up its own production cuts targets for the upcoming winters.

Subsequently, Tangshan, which is China's one of the key-steel producing city of Hebei province has already announced production cuts, starting 1 Oct'18, by dividing the city's mills into four categories based on emissions intensity and imposing 0-70% production cuts over 1 Oct 2018 to 31 Mar 2019.

While the percentage of production cuts depends upon the emission level of the mills, the city has yesterday ordered output cut of 50% for all the mills for one week starting from 11 Oct to 18 Oct due to the adverse weather forecast, according to a city government document.

As per the document issued, the normal winter curbs on heavy industry in place since 1 Oct'18 will continue even after the end of the week-long emergency controls.

Other temporary measures include ordering coal-fired power plants to reduce their loads, for coking plants to extend their coking process period, to reduce dust, and for miners to completely halt output.

In July 2018, the Tangshan city government had ordered companies in the steel, coke and coal-fired power sectors to comply with the new 'ultra low' emission standards and gave mills until end-October to meet the targets. Mills are directed to cut the concentration of particulate matters to 10 micrograms per cubic meter from 40 micrograms, while sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide concentrations must drop to 35 micrograms from 180 and to 50 micrograms from 300, respectively.

The companies that meet ultra-low emissions targets are exempted from the winter cuts, which run until March 31, 2019. Other companies are required to reduce output by varying percentages based on their emission levels.