[SMM Steel]

Recently, the cold-rolled automotive sheet production at Pangang Xichang Steel Vanadium Sheets & Plates Plant achieved a key breakthrough, with automotive sheet yield improving 0.26% YoY, and product quality reaching its best level since commissioning. Automotive sheets are the plant's flagship product for profit growth. As capacity has expanded significantly, the high-volume, high-throughput production conditions have posed greater challenges to end-to-end process, equipment, operations, and quality control. To address losses from inclusions, downgrades, and cutting scrap during production, the plant focused on the entire production chain—steelmaking, hot rolling, pickling and cold rolling, and continuous annealing—carrying out defect tracing, tiered control, and closed-loop rectification. At the same time, it refined special assessments on yield for each process step, continuously optimized core processes such as rolling, annealing, and shape control, strictly implemented end-to-end management from slab charging to finished product warehousing, and resolved production bottlenecks one by one. This indicator breakthrough is the result of coordinated efforts across production, technical, equipment, and quality positions. Frontline technical personnel continuously optimized process plans, operators strictly followed standardized operations, and quality personnel improved ledger management and closed-loop handling of quality issues, comprehensively and rigorously controlling product losses. Going forward, the plant will continue to consolidate the results of this campaign, tap deeper into indicator improvement potential, precisely rectify end-to-end production losses, and further optimize automotive sheet products to achieve dual improvements in capacity scale and product quality, burnish the Pangang automotive sheet brand, and help the enterprise improve quality and efficiency.

On August 31, Angang Guangzhou Automotive Steel and SMS held an online launch ceremony for the Full-Process Quality Execution System (QES) project. Project management and technical execution teams from both sides attended the meeting, officially kicking off the project construction. Grounded in the quality management needs of high-end automotive steel products, this collaborative project will help Guangzhou Steel complete a comprehensive iterative upgrade of its quality management system and build more robust digital quality control capabilities, marking an important milestone in the company's push toward intelligent manufacturing and accelerated digital transformation. The QES quality solution provided by SMS to Guangzhou Steel is closely tailored to Guangzhou Steel's customized business requirements, addressing the company's dual development goals of process flexibility in capacity and consistently stable product quality, and building a full-chain closed-loop quality assurance system covering data collection, analysis, assessment, and management decision-making.

[Iran] Domestic HRC prices increased to USD 537-589/tonne ex-works this week, driven by a 15% depreciation of the rial over the past two weeks, higher replacement costs and uncertainty over imported supply. Downstream buyers continued to purchase only as needed, indicating that the price increase was mainly currency-driven rather than supported by stronger underlying demand.