On July 12, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published a file entitled ‘Regulations on Steel Industry Production'. According to the file, the volumes of newly built blast furnaces in China should be above 400 cubic meters, while the nominal capacities of new converters and electric furnaces should be above 30 mt; in addition, the volume of reconstructed blast furnaces should be above 1,000 cubic meters, the nominal capacities of reconstructed converters should be above 120 mt, and the nominal capacity of reconstructed electric furnace should be above 70 mt.
As regards production scale, the new regulations are as follows: for producers of common carbon steel, crude steel output capacity needs to have been in excess of 1 million mt in 2009, while producers of special steel need to have had an output capacity above 300,000 mt in 2009.