HR galvanized capacity increases in China

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.