SteelOrbis Shanghai
Hebei Province-based Tangshan Iron & Steel Group Co. Ltd. (Tangshan Steel) has recently begun trial
production at its new hot rolled
galvanized coil line. The new
production line with its designed capacity of 300,000 metric tons is very significant in that it almost doubles
China's national output capacity for the product. Because, in
China there are only two lines apart from Tangshan Steel's line.
With hot rolled coil as the base
plate, hot rolled
galvanized coil is produced by galvanizing on the hot rolled coil directly after pickling. Compared with cold rolled
galvanized coil, hot rolled
galvanized coil has an obvious price advantage because it does not need to be cold rolled. Thus, there are prospects of good demand for hot rolled
galvanized coil in house-building, the car industry, steel silo manufacture, railway passenger car manufacture, freeway guardrail
production, etc.
Hot rolled
galvanized coil does not differ greatly from cold rolled
galvanized coil in service performance. And so, due to its obvious cost advantage, hot rolled
galvanized coil should, in theory at least, be able to replace its cold rolled equivalent.
The main domestic steel mills that produce hot rolled
galvanized coil are Handan Steel,
Baosteel and Tangshan Steel. The hot rolled
galvanized coil
production line of Handan Steel was the first large hot rolled
galvanized coil line in
China. It commenced
production in 2003 and has a capacity of 300,000 metric tons of 1.0 mm-4.0mm thick hot rolled
galvanized coil per annum. Up to the present time, Handan Steel has been the leading hot rolled
galvanized coil producer in the domestic market. The output of
Baosteel hot rolled
galvanized coil has not been very significant. It has mainly been supplied directly to end users and has hardly circulated in the market. Conceived as part of Tangshan Iron & Steel Group Co. Ltd.'s hot rolled sheet steel deep-processing project, Tangshan Steel's new hot rolled
galvanized coil
production line, representing nearly half of the national capacity, now looks set to claim a very sizeable market share.