An environmental protection inspection team from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has announced that Liaoning Province-based steel producer Minmetals Yingkou Medium Plate Co. Ltd has failed to close backward production facilities as required and has been responsible for excessive discharges of pollutants and has been guilty of fraud in relation to “green factories”.
Four 450 cubic meter blast furnaces, one 132 square meter sintering machine and a 2,800 mm medium plate production line are still in operation at the company’s facilities, whereas they should have been eliminated by the end of 2010.
Moreover, the inspection team found that the company’s sintering machines were responsible for excessive emissions on multiple occasions in 2017.
The inspection team also found that, by means of concealment and false reporting, Minmetals Yingkou Medium Plate was included in the first batch of green factories in Liaoning Province in May 2018 and was listed in the fourth batch of green factories by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in July this year.
The second round of environmental protection inspections in China started on July 10 of the current year, continuing until August 15. Market analysts consider that the inspections will provide a certain degree of support for steel prices due to possible cuts in steel production of mills which were breaking the rules, and due to implementation of stricter controls on emissions.
Minmetals Yingkou Medium Plate is one of the major producers and exporters of of high-end medium and heavy plates in China, with a total capacity of 6 million mt per year.