SHANGHAI, Jun 29 (SMM) – Steel mills in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, are expected to resume operations in early July as they began to dry furnaces and other preparatory work in late June as of Friday June 29. 

This is in line with SMM's expectations. We learned that most of them passed checks by the environmental inspection team from the provincial government and finished rectification as of June 14.

In early April, all steel mills in Xuzhou were suspended for rectifications following environmental inspections by the provincial authorities. They could only resume production after they passed the checks.

Expected resumption time, however, was delayed from late April, when the inspection teams were heard to have left the region, as stricter probe was imposed with another round of month-long environmental review from the central government from late May.