Since the beginning of this year, the national economy has rebounded for the better, the steel industry has shown strong development resilience, and the overall operation is basically stable, but it also faces certain difficulties and challenges, and the foundation for operation recovery still needs to be consolidated.

In August this year, the Ministry of industry and information technology, the national development and Reform Commission and other seven departments jointly issued the work plan for stable growth of the iron and steel industry, which played a positive role in studying and judging the industry situation, improving the operation situation, promoting stable operation and clarifying the development direction.

Fan Tiejun, director of the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, said that the iron and steel industry has entered a period of in-depth adjustment, and the focus of adjustment will be more on structural optimization and quality improvement. Industry enterprises should seek progress in stability, accelerate high-quality development, and build new development advantages with high-end, green and intelligent development.

Actively adapt to market changes

In the first 10 months of this year, my country's crude steel output was 0.874 billion tons, a year-on-year increase of 1.4 percent; the apparent consumption of crude steel was 0.803 billion tons, a year-on-year decrease of 2.0 percent; and the export of steel was 74.732 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 34.8 percent.

In general, my country's steel supply is stronger than demand. The increase in domestic manufacturing steel demand and the growth of steel exports have become the main driving force supporting the growth of steel production. The contraction of steel demand in the construction industry has become the main factor in the reduction of consumption. The actual downward shift in the cost center of gravity of steel enterprises is less than the decline in steel prices, and the overall profit of the industry decreased year-on-year.

According to statistics from the China Iron and Steel Association, from January to October this year, the total profit of key statistics member steel companies was 71.9 billion billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 26.8; the average profit margin was 1.33, a year-on-year decrease of 0.47 percentage points.

The relevant departments of the state timely launched the "iron and steel industry steady growth work plan", a strong boost to the development of the industry confidence. According to the analysis of the relevant report of the China Steel Association, with the national grasp of the economic stability of the "package" of policies and successive measures to fully implement, show results, help steel demand gradually recover.

On June 6 this year, Masteel's new special steel project (phase I) was put into operation, and has now achieved phased production. The total investment of the project is 9.269 billion yuan. After the project is fully put into operation, Maanshan Iron and Steel's special steel production capacity will exceed 4 million tons.

On December 9, the first batch of finished products from Zhongtian Huaian Company's Steel Cord No.7 Factory rolled off the production line. Zhongtian Steel's fine steel cord project products are mainly used in radial tire applications.

Sheng Rongsheng, general manager of Zhongtian Iron and Steel Group (Huai 'an) New Materials Co., Ltd., said that Zhongtian Iron and Steel is actively entering the downstream deep processing field. After all the high-quality steel cord projects reach production, it is expected to achieve annual sales of more than 20 billion yuan.

The practice of the above-mentioned enterprises is only a microcosm of the steel industry actively adapting to market changes and speeding up the upgrading of quality and efficiency.

Better meet the demand for high-end steel. The number of steel varieties used in manufacturing industries such as ships, automobiles, home appliances, and emerging industries such as wind power and photovoltaics continued to grow. In the first three quarters, the output of electrical steel plate (strip) increased by 14.3, hot-rolled sheet increased by 18.2, and cold-rolled narrow steel strip increased by 15.7. From the perspective of export varieties, the growth of hot-rolled coils and medium and heavy plates is obvious, the export of coated plates has maintained a steady growth, and the proportion of exports of high value-added products has increased significantly.

Actively promote intelligent transformation. At present, the application density of robots in the iron and steel industry has reached 54 units (sets)/10,000 people. 90% of iron and steel enterprises have established production and manufacturing execution and energy control systems, and enterprises above 5 million tons have basically established control and connection systems. Iron and steel enterprises actively promote the in-depth integration of the new generation of information and communication technologies such as digitalization and intelligence with the whole process of steel manufacturing, forming a platform management and control architecture including intelligent production, quality control, equipment operation and maintenance and other multi-business integration, thus realizing the improvement of production efficiency, energy efficiency level, quality stability and labor intensity of employees.