Steel News Roundup

SHANGHAI, Mar 29 (SMM) — This is a roundup of news in the steel industry for last week.

Meeting held for carbon peaking in the industries of steel, non-ferrous, and building materials

The Industry Department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) held a meeting on carbon peaking in the industries of steel, non-ferrous metals and building materials on March 19. The NDRC will promptly formulate carbon peaking plans for steel, non-ferrous and building material industries, promote the green and low-carbon industrial transformation and upgrade of traditional high-energy-consuming industries, and improve energy allocation and efficiency.

Illegal flow of funds into the property market to be strictly investigated

The financial supervision departments of first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have announced the investigations of illegal inflow of credit funds from banks into the property market. "New first-tier" cities such as Hangzhou, Xi'an and Chengdu have also started to investigate illegal funds. The regulatory bureaus and branches said that they will further strengthen the review and management of loan business, and continue to prevent illegal credit funds from flowing into the real estate market. The discovered violations will be severely penalised and recovered or cleared.

Stricter measures for capacity replacement to be implemented

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will formulate more stringent implementation measures for capacity replacement in the iron and steel industry. The Ministry will improve the early warning mechanism of capacity information, implement dual control of capacity and output, and gradually establish an output constraint mechanism based on carbon emissions, pollutant emissions and energy consumption. At present, China's steel industry has the largest carbon emissions among the 31 manufacturing industries, and crude steel output accounts for more than half of the global crude steel production.

Key car companies produced 1.27 million cars till mid- March, up 120% on the year

China Association of Automobile Manufactures disclosed that  11 key automobile enterprises produced 1.27 million vehicles  till mid-March, an increase of 120% year on year. Among them, output of passenger cars stood at 1.01 million units, a year-on-year increase of 130%, and the production of commercial vehicles totalled 254,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 100%.

SASAC: To promote the strategic reorganisation of state-owned enterprises

On March 23, the Enterprise Reform Bureau of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council announced the work schedule for 2021. SASAC will steadily promote the strategic reorganisation of state-owned enterprises in the chemical, steel, and information industries, guide enterprises to carry out mergers and acquisitions according to national strategies, form new state-owned enterprise groups, complete the reorganisation of China Pipe and the handover of new enterprises, support the state-owned enterprises with medical and health as main business to further integrate resources and cultivate competitive groups, and deepen the reduction of production capacity of steel and coal for state-owned enterprises.

Large amounts of imported secondary steel raw materials arrived at Tangshan Port

3,096 mt of imported secondary steel raw materials arrived at Jingtang Port from South Korea, and passed the customs clearance. This was the first batch of secondary steel raw materials imported by Hebei after the national standard of "Secondary Steel Raw Materials" was officially implemented on January 1, 2021. Jingtang Port has successfully unloaded 2 ships of imported raw materials, and more ships will arrive at the ports.