Shandong Province-based Chinese steelmaker Shandong Iron and Steel Group (Shandong Steel Group) has announced that it respectively produced 12.13 million mt, 13.79 million mt and 13.51 million mt of pig iron, crude steel and finished steel in 2019, up 33.2 percent, 33.7 percent and 35.0 percent year on year. In 2019, the company achieved an operating revenue of RMB 71.092 billion ($10.0 billion), up 27.16 percent year on year, while registered a gross profit of RMB 579 million ($81.6 million) in the given year, down 72.51 percent year on year.
The company said demand for finished steel in China will likely amount to 860 million mt in 2020 (which is down about three percent compared to 2019), while a series of capacity replacement projects will be put into operation in the current year, which will further increase the existing oversupply, thereby causing finished steel prices to move down. Accordingly, it is thought that Chinese steel enterprises’ profitability will decline in 2020.
Meanwhile, Shandong Steel stated that it aims to produce 13.7 million mt of pig iron, 15.6 million mt of crude steel and 15.3 million mt of finished steel in 2020.