Posted on 25 Mar 2022
China's imports of semi-finished steel products including both carbon and alloy steel semis declined by a large 25% last year from 2020's record high to reach 13.7 million tonnes, according to new statistics from the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC).
The 2021 number was still the second highest on record after 2020, reflecting the central government's efforts at encouraging the import of preliminary iron and steel products to leave domestic mills to produce more higher value-added items.
Effective from May 1 last year, the country's Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council removed all import tariffs on semi-finished steel products such as billets, slabs and blooms that had previously stood at 2% for non-ASEAN countries, as Mysteel Global reported, a move which led such imports to rocket past 1 million tonnes that month and where they have remained ever since.
Chinese steel re-rollers, especially those in East China, have been largely relying on imported steel semis after no fewer than 15 generally-small steel producers in Xuzhou city, in East China's Jiangsu province, progressively shut and scrapped facilities beginning from around 2019, market sources indicated.
Besides, domestic integrated steelmakers have been prompted to import steel semis for re-rolling too, as the country has been controlling domestic crude steel production to help reduce carbon emissions, domestic mill sources observed.
The countries of ASEAN remained China's largest source of semi-finished steel imports last year, chief among them being Indonesia, which exported a total of 3 million tonnes of steel semis to China last year. This tonnage accounted for 22% of the country's total steel semis imports for 2021 and made Indonesia China's largest supplier of these items, according to the GACC statistics.
Indonesia's proportion increased significantly from only 10% in 2020, Mysteel Global noted.
"Indonesian semis exports to China are mainly slabs, and mostly stainless slab with some carbon slab," commented an official from South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute (SEAISI), adding they are mainly made by PT Dexin Steel Indonesia (Dexin Steel).
Among that 3 million tonnes total that sailed from Indonesia last year, around 97,000 tonnes were stainless slab, 1.2 million were other forms of stainless semis, around 422,400 tonnes were carbon slab and 1.3 million tonnes carbon billet, according to the Customs statistics.
Dexin Steel is a Chinese-invested steelmaker in the Morowali Industrial Park in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province. The firm is a joint venture between Delong Holding Limited (Delong Holding), a steel conglomerate headquartered in North China's Beijing, and Tsingshan Group, a major stainless and carbon steel producer with steelworks in both China and Indonesia.
Dexin Steel commissioned its No.2 blast furnace of 1,780 cu m in February 2021, which lifted its molten iron capacity to 3.68 million tonnes/year, as Mysteel Global reported.
Source:Mysteel Global
