China Steel to Secure 20 million tonnes Steel Source in 2014

China Steel of Taiwan secures annual 20 million tonnes of steel source by 2014. The firm secures 18.2 million tonnes from expanded own and group companies’ works and import from Japan while the firm purchases slab from Vietnamese integrated steel plant led by Formosa Plastics Group of Taiwan. China Steel tries to follow growing demand in emerging countries including India through the additional steel source and higher valued products.

China Steel’s chairman Tsou Jo-Chi said the strategy to a reporter of Japan Metal Bulletin in Kaohsiung. He said the firm has limited room to expand the output capacity at Kaohsiung works with annual 10 million tonnes of output capacity. The group company of Dragon Steel expands the output capacity to annual 5 million tonnes when the firm launches second blast furnace by end of 2012. Mr. Tsou said Dragon Steel will expand the existing electric furnace steel making capacity by 40% to 1.4 million tonnes in 2014 through better operation and the group’s output capacity reaches total 16.4 million tonnes.

China Steel tries to increase the output capacity marginally at Kaohsiung while the firm secures annual 1.8 million tonnes of slab import from Sumitomo Metal Industries even after the merge with Nippon Steel.

China Steel has 5% share in Formosa Plastics’ Vietnamese steel plant with annual 13 million tonnes of output capacity, which is completed in 2014. China Steel purchases certain volume of steel from Vietnamese plant to supply slab to Taiwanese operations and hot coil to Vietnamese cold rolling joint venture.

Through the across the board effort, China Steel secures annual 20 million tonnes of steel products output capacity. The firm launches third cold rolling mill in July 2011 and non grain oriented electrical steel making line in 2014 at Kaohsiung.