Chinese steelmaker Chongqing Steel (Chonggang) has stated that in the past two years it has made great progress as regards output of shipbuilding plate, moving from eleventh place in China in 2008 to fifth place in 2009, and expected to move into the top three in 2010. With the launch of its 4,100 mm wide and heavy plate production lines in May this year, Chonggang states that it has further improved its core competitiveness, strengthening its position in the wide and heavy plate sector, with the eventual aim of ranking first in China in terms of output volume of shipbuilding plate.
With the combination of the 4,100 mm production lines with the existing 2,700 mm mill and also with the 1,780 mm continuous hot rolling plate facility to be launched by July this year, the company will focus on the production of plates for special applications, which will account for more than 90 percent of its total plate output. It is expected that the producer's annual output of high quality shipbuilding plate will exceed 3.5 million mt. Chonggang is currently able to supply a complete range of steel plate for ship vessels above 300,000 dwt.