On September 25, Dai Zhihao, general manager of Chinese steel giant Baosteel, forecast at an annual industry conference in the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qingdao that China's annual steel consumption will peak at 825 million mt in 2018 as demand growth slows.
Baosteel had predicted earlier this year that China's annual steel consumption will reach 698 million mt for the current year.
Meanwhile, Wang Xiaoqi, vice-chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), told the same conference that he expects annual iron ore output from the major global miners to increase by 470 million mt over the 2013-2015 period and that prices for the steelmaking ingredient will start to drop from 2014.
According to the CISA's figures, apparent steel consumption in China amounted to 426.55 million mt in the first seven months of this year, up 6.4 percent year on year, while the figure for the whole of 2012 was 687 million mt, Mr. Wang said.