Posted on 13 Nov 2020
Despite higher steel output, China’s steel scrap consumption decreased by 1% or 1.58 million tonnes on year to 155.2 million tonnes in the first nine months of 2020, Li Shubin, vice chairman of the China Association of Metalscrap Utilization (CAMU), shared on November 12 at the 2020 National Steel Scrap Conference in Haikou, South China’s Hainan province.
In contrast, over January-September, China’s crude steel output grew 4.5% on year to about 782 million tonnes, while steel scrap consumed in China’s overall steelmaking fell by 1.1 percentage points on year to 19.86%, which was mainly due to the pandemic, he said.
In early February, China’s domestic steel scrap collectors and recyclers had come to a complete halt, leading to a substantial reduction in scrap supply, forcing most of the Chinese steel mills including both blast-furnace and EAF producers to either cut down on the scrap ratio in their steelmaking or to have halted operations among the latter, Li shared at the conference.
“The spread of pandemic in China has been brought under control since late early March, but the regional lockdowns and logistics disruption has delayed the resumption among the domestic steel scrapyards until the start of April,” he said.
To make up for the difference in scrap consumption on year and to hit the targeted 20% steel scrap consumption in the country’s steelmaking, “we will have to beef up the efforts for the last three months of this year,” he commented.
In the first nine months, China’s electric-arc-furnaces (EAFs) contributed to 9.65% of the country’s total steel output, or down 0.25 percentage point on year, though the scrap utilization in the EAFs edged up by 49.8 kg/t on year to 651.3 kg/t, but scrap feeds into the converters fell by 16.3 kg/tonne to 150.2 kg/t, according to the CAMU statistics.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
Source:Mysteel Global
