Posted on 13 Nov 2020
It is so exciting to be able to go on a business trip for the first time ever in 2020, flying all the way from Shanghai to Haikou, a beautiful coastal city in China’s southmost Hainan province on November 11, to join the other steel scrap industry sources, meeting up face to face and chatting about the sunrise industry in China.
The enthusiasm vibrated in the lobby of the conference hotel, with people enthusiastically introducing their shredding machinery, discussing about all the possible changes should Beijing open up the imports of steel scrap, and at the same time, mulling over the new business opportunities to be brought along with the expansion of steel scrap recycling and reuse in China.
November 11 is the busy day for the Chinese consumers to grab the great sales online in the “singles’ day”, and it has turned out to be a rather busy day for Mysteel’s employees to help the attendees of the 2020 National Steel Scrap Conference with registration matters.
The event, to be held over November 11-13, has already shown signs of a probably successful events, as delegates from different sectors of the value chain including collection, processing, steelmaking, hedging, and research and development institutions to dash to the registration desk, and “so far over 800 guests have collected their conference materials out of the over 1,000 registrations,” a staff at the registration desk shared happily when looking for the delegate pass for the gentleman standing in front of her.
“Haikou is a beautiful city, and it feels great to meet all the industrial fellows again here and in 2020, the conference has been expanding in size since the first event in 2018 in Chengdu and then in Fuzhou in 2019,” an official from a scrap processing machinery manufacturer in East China’s Shandong province chatted with Mysteel Global on the sidelines the conference.
“After China’s elimination of all the induction furnaces in 2017, the Chinese steel mills have got used to gradually increasing scrap feeds in their blast furnaces and converters as an alternative to iron ore and also to enhance the productivity, efficiency, and cost effectiveness,” an official from a scrapyard in North China’s Hebei province shared the observation in the past couple of years.
His company, having just been certificated as a qualified scrap supplier by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), has been eager to learn about the details of the steel scrap standardization as well as the steel scrap futures that have been speculated in the market for long.
“We need to be armed with the information and knowledge and better earlier than the others so as to be better prepared and in an advantageous position in the fiercely competitive market, especially after the possible freeing up steel scrap imports,” he said.
Such topics, with little surprise, have been heatedly discussed among the delegates and the panelists during the afternoon event on November 11.
China’s Dalian Commodity Exchanges (DCE), the exchange in charge of designing and launching the steel scrap futures, shared openly at the afternoon event that “conditions for the steel scrap launch are ripe”, and the DCE officials even went further by sharing all the details of the draft contract including the registered warehouses, delivery, as well as trading and settlement forms to be filled in by investors.
Among the details are that Jiangsu province in East China’s has been selected as the benchmark region for the standard contract prices, and Shandong in East China as the alternative for the contract prices, DCE disclosed.
“China’s steel mills are very excited about the (launch of) scrap futures”, as with it, the domestic steel mills will have a basket of complete hedging tools for them to better manage risks, Luo Xiaogang, a senior manager of Ouyeel Blockchain Finance and Metal Recycling Resources Company, commented at the panel discussion.
By now, China’s future exchanges including DCE and the Shanghai Futures Exchange have already launched upstream and downstream ferrous products including iron ore, coke, coking coal, rebar, wire rod, HRC and stainless steel, he elaborated.
“China’s steel scrapyards are also looking forward to it, as the futures contract will help in the aspects of market price discovery, stability, and transparency,” he added.
November 12 will a day with a full schedule of keynote speakers sharing more insights on China’s steel scrap standardization, import policies, utilization in China’s steelmaking and the progress of the steel scrap futures, and it will be an exciting day in many perspectives such as the sheer size of the mass gathering to say the least in 2020, a year that has been harassed by the COVID-19.
Written by Olivia Zhang, zhangwd@mysteel.com and Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
Source:Mysteel Global
