2024 stainless steel industry operating conditions are manifested in the stainless crude volume, apparent consumption, import and export volume year-on-year growth. The price trend in the domestic market is low, export volume keeps increasing but the export price is low. The overall efficiency of the industry is low, and the pressure of enterprise operation is greater.
In the first nine months of this year, China’s stainless steel crude steel production of about 28.63 million tons, there is the growth of 960,000 tons, the increase rate 3.45%; stainless steel apparent consumption of about 23.7 million tons, an increase of 400,000 tons, an increase of 1.73%. It is expected that in 2024, the crude steel production of stainless steel will remain at 38 million tons to 38.5 million tons, an increase of 3.5% to 5%; its exports will reach 5 million tons, an increase of about 900,000 tons year-on-year; the imports are about 2 million tons, basically flat year-on-year; the net export volume expanded to about 3 million tons, an increase of nearly 950,000 tons year-on-year. Net exports increased significantly by the impact of stainless steel is expected to narrow the annual increase in apparent consumption, will remain at 31.4 million tons to 31.9 million tons, an increase of 1% to 2.5%.
Enterprises value to develop new products, TISCO launches high-strength corrosion-resistant composite material TE4003C5; Qingtuo 2205 duplex stainless steel plate for the first time in the chemical cargo ship; the North Harbor new materials successfully developed a series of high antimagnetic stainless steel GH1201, button steel.
Stainless steel production capacity international and domestic is still increasing, cold rolling capacity will usher in the peak of production. 2024, the domestic plan to put into production stainless steel cold rolling capacity of nearly 5 million tons, domestic stainless steel cold rolling production is increasing trend, and the vast majority of the project to be put into operation in the second half of the year. From the international perspective, Indonesia will build a new stainless steel refinery, India Orissa has completed a 1 million tons of expansion projects, the total capacity of 3 million tons / year, the release of new production of stainless steel project production has begun to increase.
Nickel and chromium raw material prices are high and unstable, resulting in high stainless steel costs. From the nickel resources, nickel prices rose in the first half of this year’s highest, the second half of the nickel price is weak fall, but the price is relatively firm. The price of chrome ore this year is slowly rising. From scrap, EU demand for stainless steel scrap remained strong in Q1 2024, and EU net imports of stainless steel scrap from third countries increased significantly. From the global stainless steel production in various regions of the scrap ratio, Europe is 85%, the United States is 83%, Japan is 72%, India is 56%, China is 31%, it can be seen that the utilization of stainless steel scrap in China there is still a lot of room for improvement.
