Tangshan And Qinhuangdao Impose Production Restrictions On Steel Mills To Improve Air Quality

SHANGHAI, Jun 7 (SMM) – On June 3, some steel enterprises in Tangshan received verbal environmental protection notices from regulators, requiring A-level enterprises to shut down one sintering furnace until the end of June. Non-A-level enterprises may shut down one blast furnace, and the specific number is still under negotiations. Qinhuangdao City officially issued a document, requiring four local steel mills to shut down some sintering capacity from June 3 to June 7, and to extend the cycle time of coking process to more than 30 hours. Boosted by this news, steel billet prices in the two regions rose by 110 yuan/mt.

Production restrictions in the two regions mainly target sintering machines, while blast furnaces are unaffected for the time being. A local steel mill said that it currently has sinter in stock, and the suspension of one sintering machine will not affect its production for now. If it doesn’t have enough sinter by the end of June, it will consider purchasing pellets, lumps or sinters from other regions. Another steel mill said that it has stocked up raw material inventory since April to cope with sudden production restrictions.

According to SMM, there are a total of 11 non-A-level steel mills in Tangshan. If those non-A-level steel mills are required to shut down blast furnaces in the future, roughly 30,000 mt of pig iron output will be lost per day on average.