China’s top steelmaking city Tangshan plans to reduce the number of the steel producers operating in the city by half by 2020 and eliminate inefficient equipment in an attempt to clear one of the country’s most polluted cities, as reported by Reuters.
Tangshan aims to keep less than 30 steel companies by 2020 and cut this number to around 25 by 2025. “Those who fail to meet environmental and efficiency standards will be shut, and also those that cannot convert from road transport to rail by 2020,” said an official at Tangshan’s Industry and Information Technology Bureau, quoted by Reuters.
The official also informed Reuters that blast furnaces with annual production capacity of less than 1 million mt, converters with annual capacity below 1.15 million mt and sintering machines smaller than 180 square meters will also be eliminated by 2020.