Dexin Steel Ignites 1st Blast Furnace in Indonesia

The Chinese-Indonesian joint venture PT Dexin Steel Indonesia (Dexin Steel) blew-in the first of a pair of 1,780 cu m blast furnaces at its steelworks in the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) in Central Sulawesi province on February 21 after nearly two years of construction, according to a release the same day from WISDRI Engineering & Research Incorporation (WISDRI), the project's building contractor.

Construction on the two blast furnaces started in April 2018. The twin furnaces are a key part of Dexin Steel's new 3.5 MnT/year integrated steelworks in Morowali, which also includes two 230 cu m sintering machines, three 600 MT/day lime kilns and two 5.5-meter coke ovens, Mysteel Global learnt from posts from WISDRI's parent, Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC).

For steel producing, Dexin Steel plans to add two 120-tonne converters, a 1 MnT/y bar rolling mill and a 500,000 MT/y wire rod rolling mill. The high-speed wire rod rolling line was hot-commissioned on September 23 last year, according to MCC. Dexin Steel is investing $980 million in the project.

With the project, Dexin Steel will be producing bars and wire rods, as well as billets, to satisfy the potentially robust demand for construction steel projects in Indonesia, as well as the ASEAN region, Mysteel Global understands.

Dexin Steel is a joint venture between Tsingshan Group, the world's leading stainless steel producer, Delong Holdings Limited, a steel conglomerate headquartered in Beijing and the PT IMIP.

The 3.5 MnT/y carbon steel project is part of the Tsingshan's plan to erect a 10 MnT/y integrated steel mill in the IMIP to produce both carbon and stainless steel using local raw materials such as iron ore, coal and nickel ore, as reported.

In 2019, apparent steel consumption in the ASEAN-6 countries consisting of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam is thought to have reached 83.2 MnT, up 4% from 2018, according to South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute.

The consumption growth is projected to remain at around 4 MnT/y in coming years, though local steel production is foreseen to grow at a faster pace with planned projects coming on stream, including the Dexin Steel's. Concerns are being raised about markets becoming oversupplied, especially of long products, as Mysteel Global reported.