China FAMOUS Steel Engineering Company Company News

Asia: Five US steel trade associations have released a report documenting how the steel industry in China 'is heavily subsidised by its government' and alleging its rapid growth has been fuelled 'by government subsidies and other market-distorting policies', including raw material price controls. The report from the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Steel Manufacturers Association, the Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports, the Specialty Steel Industry of North America and the American Institute of Steel Construction states: ‘The Chinese government has supported the country’s steel industry primarily through cash grants, equity infusions, government-mandated mergers and acquisitions, preferential loans and directed credit, land use subsidies, subsidies for utilities, raw material price controls, tax policies and benefits, currency policies, and lax enforcement of environmental regulation.’ The report analyses 25 of the largest steel companies in China and looks to detail the amount and types of government subsidies received in recent years. ‘These subsidies and policies have led to tremendous overcapacity and created a highly-fragmented domestic steel sector in China made up of many inefficient, and heavily polluting, companies,’ it is contended. According to the five US associations, this analysis supports the view that China should not be granted market economy status in December. Furthermore, its findings will be used to ‘further advance the global dialogue among nations on the elimination of excess steel capacity throughout the world’, they add.

When it comes to providing stimulus to meet growth targets, you can’t bet against China. But when it comes to cutting output, things can get obscure… literally.   A new report by Greenpeace East Asia and Chinese consultancy Custeel says that despite China’s high-profile efforts to tackle overcapacity, China’s operating steel capacity increased in 2016. The report states that 73% of the announced cuts in capacity were already idle — in other words the plants were not operating. Only 23 million metric tons of cut capacity involved shutting down production plants that were operating.   Meanwhile, some 49 mmt of capacity that had previously been suspended was restarted, and 12 mmt of new operating capacity came online. That means that China added 37 million metric tons additional operating capacity in 2016.   After falling in 2015, Chinese crude steel output is now rising again at a healthy clip — it was up 4% on the year in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, hot-rolled coil prices in China rose near 70% for the year. Despite resilient output, demand growth has been much more significant. As a result, Chinese steel exports have fallen double digits for four consecutive months. Can Just Promises Sustain Rising Prices? Sentiment in the steel industry is also bullish thanks to expectations of lower output this year. In January, China unleashed its boldest reform plan so far for its bloated steel sector, saying it will eliminate all production of low-quality steel products by the end of June.   Eliminating excess steel capacity and restructuring the industry has enormous environmental significance because the steel industry is the second-largest emitter of air pollution in China. This is another reason to believe Beijing will strengthen its supply-side reforms this year.   However, according to the report most of the capacity elimination target set for the 2016-2020 period has, technically, already been achieved in 2016, meaning that capacity elimination in 2017-2020 will be much more modest unless targets are increased. Meanwhile, a 21 mmt capacity increase is still in the pipeline from new projects, and there is at least 42 mmt of existing idle capacity that could be used to fulfill the capacity elimination targets.   Two-Month Trial: Metal Buying Outlook   These numbers give us reasons to doubt on what China can deliver this year. China is now under pressure to demonstrate progress on capacity cuts. But financial and legal incentives to keep marginal firms running will cause regulators to struggle to enforce capacity cuts. Chinese steel mills are so hard to get rid of as they are often a key source of local tax revenue and employment. What This Means For Metal Buyers The sustainability of the ongoing rising trend in steel prices will much depend on China. Buyers will need to keep a close eye on how much growth can China deliver and how much of the promised production cuts will actually materialize this year. The problem is that growth without controlling steel out will only translate into severe air pollution. .  

3 Reasons Why Steel Prices Will Rise Well Into 2017 We are republishing our best-read posts of 2016 during the holidays as we look forward to 2016. This is the most-recent of our Best-of-MetalMiner posts, having only been published a few weeks ago on November 15. It continues the trend of highlighting the predictions of our lead forecasting analyst, Raul de Frutos. — Jeff Yoders, editor Since their peak in the summer, domestic prices of flat steel products have fallen in the range of 20-30%. However, we have some reasons to believe U.S. steel prices are set to rebound: Trump Wins: Investors Bet On Steel Companies What changes in the steel industry Donald Trump will make are still unknown. What’s clear is that the new president-elect made trade, manufacturing and the steel industry a cornerstone of his agenda. MetalMiner Price Benchmarking: Current and Historical Prices for the Metals You Buy Stocks of American steel companies soared last week as investors hope that a Trump-led government will boost domestic infrastructure, which could be a boom for steel demand. In addition he has stated he would institute more measures to protect domestic steel producers. Dow Jones U.S. Steel Index hits a two-year high. Source:MetalMiner analysis of @stockcharts.com data. A good benchmark for steel prices is the Dow Jones US Steel Index, which tracks major steel producers around the globe. Following the election, the index rose sharply to the highest levels in two years. The stocks of US steel companies are linked to domestic steel prices. This powerful price increase hints to a rebound in steel prices.

Chinese steel prices started the new year with a positive twist, although some Chinese folk would hardly call it positive, as gains were brought about by adverse weather conditions in the country’s Northern provinces. Investors are expecting a slight deficit of steel goods following the Chinese government’s moves to curb steel production in regions with a hampered ecological situation. Heavy smog has covered Northern China this weekend and will continue to make life harder for the locals until Thursday, according to weather reports. Traditionally, during such weather calamities China is curbing steel output, as well as halting cement production and construction works. The most active May rebar contract at the Shanghai Exchange gained 0.6% on the day to 2,927 yuan or about $420.87 per ton. Iron ore price at the Dalian Commodity Exchange rose 0.2% to 555,5 yuan per ton. While China is endorsing steel production cuts to ease the blows dealt to its ecology combined with decreased demand from the US following the introduction of higher tariffs on Chinese-origin steel, Vietnam is reaping the benefits, as lower Chinese imports must be substituted from elsewhere. According to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), US steel import from Vietnam rose 419.6% in January-November 2016 over the 2015 figure to 903,000 tons. Vietnam outpaced China, Taiwan and Germany, and is now holding third place among top steel exporters to the US following South Korea and Turkey. However, overall imports of steel and steel products to the US fell by 16.5% and 17.3% year-over-year respectively. The trend is likely to continue in 2017, considering Donald Trump’s domestic economic expansion policy. US steel output is already forecast to expand 4.4% in 2017.

The 2016 China Steel Construction Development Peak Forum which was co-sponsored by Civil Engineering, Water Conservancy and Architecture Division of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and hosted by Central Research Institute of Building and Construction Co., Ltd, Chongqing University and Tsinghua University was held on January 26. There gathered 21 academicians of construction field and over 60 leaders of government ministries, entrepreneurs, experts and scholars in Beijing, exchanging their ideas and suggestions to the development of steel structure in China. From a global perspective, the idea of greenization, informatization and industrialization is the inevitable trend in the development of construction industry.Constructions with steel structure have unique advantages in environment protection, recycling and well earthquake resistance which presenting the remarkable features of green construction and industrialization in its life cycle. After decades of development, China has made significant achievements in the development of steel structure. In the year of 2015, the annual steel output had exceeded 0.8 billion tons, the output of steel structure was about 50 million tons, manufacturing enterprise of scale of steel structure was more than 3,000, enterprise with special construction qualification was over 10 thousand; all these had shown China’s succeed in establishing a large group of steel structure landmark projects with world-leading level. However, from the view of the world’s second largest economy and steel superpowers with more than half steel output in the world, the development of steel structure in our country is still very backward. During the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, the steel consumption in steel structure hovers around 5%-6% of the steel output. The proportion of steel structure is less than 1% of the large and wide housing construction and bridges of small and medium spans, which is far lower than developed countries, and it indicates the huge potential for steel structure development in China. For the bottleneck problems of the development of steel structure housing and high-performance structure in China, the research team of Academician Xuhong Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the research team of Academician Jianguo Nie have carried out consulting and research projects of “consulting research of steel constructional housing industrialization”, “strategic research of high-performance and sustainable structural engineering development”, “new structure and its industrialization of urban and rural residential building” so as to put forward the corresponding countermeasures and solutions aiming at promoting the industrialization of steel structural construction and improving the technological level of structural engineering of our country. The “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” is the key stage of building a well-off society in an all-round way, and to widely use steel structure in the construction area plays an important role in dissolving overcapacity, promoting the adjustment of industrial structure and accelerating the new-type urbanization. On November 4, 2015, Premier Keqiang Li chaired an executive meeting of the State Council which clearly came up with the ideas of “to combine with squatter settlement rebuilding and quake-proof and comfortable housing engineering, launching the pilot of steel structural construction and expanding the use of green building materials”. From the national level, it is the leading voice for the widespread use of steel structure and it can be said for sure that the rare development opportunity of steel structure will come in the next five years. There were 4 sections in the forum. First, the forum was opened by the director of Civil Engineering, Water Conservancy and Architecture Division of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Academician Fulin Zhou from Guangzhou University and then Academician Xuhong Zhou from Chongqing University and Academician Jianguo Nie from Tsinghua University made an introduction for the project of consultant and rearch about Chinese Academy of Engineering. Second, Academician Zuyan Shen from Tongji University made a special report on “steel structural construction with greenization, industrialization and informatization”. Qingrui Yue, the President of China Steel Construction Society and Director of National Steel Structure Engineering Technology Research Center gave a report on “thoughts on the development of steel structure in China”. All attendees delivered their speeches then, and the seminar has achieved the results as expected and goal of the forum: Firstly, to comprehensively summarize the development results of steel structure, and to tease out the bottleneck problems of the issues currently affecting the development of steel structure, to make an “overall examination” on national steel structure industry; Secondly, to analyze the cause of bottlenecks and discuss the solution for the bottleneck problems of steel structure development with technical way and seek for corresponding solutions and measures; Thirdly, to combine with the “Thirteen-Five” national key research tasks and the consulting and research project of Academy of Engineering, focusing on bottleneck problem, to cooperate with the system of “produce, study, research and practice”, work and pull together, and to address or mitigate the bottleneck problem with joint efforts; Finally, to reach a consensus of the conference so as to provide the foundation for the future academician recommendations. As the major outcome of the Forum, the conference has come up with the general development route and goal for the “Thirteenth-Five” national steel structure industry, which is to strengthen the structural reform of steel structure supply side in accordance with the development concept of “innovation, coordination, green, opening, sharing”; to insist on innovation-driven, strive to resolve the bottleneck problem of the steel structure development resistance so as to accelerate the development of steel structural construction and spare no efforts to realize the healthy development of the steel structure consumption surpassing 15% of the annual growth during the “Thirteenth-Five” period and to exceed 0.1 billion tons until 2020.   In the meanwhile, Forum has put forward the following measures and suggestions on the development of steel structure: First, to strengthen the top-level design and strategic layout, to play the role of leading and demonstration in cultivating steel market by government, to increase policy support and strengthen supervision; second, to complete the whole industry chain of steel structure, support leading enterprise and industry alliance, and to implement the pilot project of steel structural construction; third, to help relative industry “go global” by steel structure-driven; fourth is innovation-driven, to solve the common and key technical problem and personnel bottlenecks in focus; finally, to renew ideas and improve the social and market recognition. The convening of the peak forum, has pointed the ways for steel structure development from macroscopic and strategic perspectives, which will be an important driving force for the rapid, healthy and sustainable development of national steel structure industry.

Our Hangzhou FAMOUS Steel Engineering Co.Ltd. will hold an exhibition at OCTOBER 8-11 in Philippine, then we will show you a lot of products related to steel structure. Our booth is NO.1220-1, Second Floor, SMX Convention Center, Manla, Philippines. Looking forward to your coming. Thank you very much!

Using steel in the construction industry has grown tremendously in recent years. Although it has long been used in certain countries for decades, steel buildings are now part of the skylines of virtually every country across the globe. Since steel was invented in 1855, it has been used extensively in constructing skyscrapers, pipelines and bridges, and the trend is growing. The advantages of steel buildings include the following; ● They can be constructed more quickly than buildings made with other materials, cost less to build and are amazingly strong. ● Steel weighs less than other materials, reduces the risk of fire, and is easier to maintain. ● Steel is also 66% recyclable, which makes it an environmentally sound, cost-effective option for builders. ● Because of their durability, steel buildings can withstand earthquakes, high winds, hurricanes and heavy snow. In addition, steel is resistant to rotting, splitting, cracking and termites. ● Insurance rates are lower because the risk of fire is reduced when steel is used. What investors and homeowners should know While a steel-framed home may cost a bit more than a traditional wood-based building, it is a wise investment because necessary maintenance is reduced, and it is energy-efficient as well. Also, the appearance of the home can be enhanced by covering it with siding, stucco or bricks, and modern technology can be used for fabrication and improved design. The reduction of storey heights lowers the cost of steel, along with other building materials, and minimizing floor-to floor heights helps reduce cooling and heating expenses. Building height can be minimized by having mechanical systems run through web openings, or integrating floor beams into partitions or the interior walls of a building, At times, the depth of beams can be limited by selecting a size that is both shallower and heavier, and still provides the strength required for the project . Because of its special qualities, including beauty and drama, steel allows architects to become more creative and provide enhancements to buildings that otherwise would be too expensive or too difficult to produce when working with any other material. For example, curving and bending can now be done in ways that were unheard of before the use of steel in buildings to achieve the desired effect. Curves formed by steel beams bent to a particular radius, segmented beams, or a combination of both methods, can be used to follow the outlines of irregular domes, arches or facades.