Baoshan Iron & Steel Co (Baoshan Steel), the Shanghai-listed arm of China Baowu Steel Group who is the largest steel producer worldwide in terms of crude steel output in 2021, saw its net profits plunge by 48.4% on year in the first half of 2022, and its H1 crude steel production also posted an on-year decline, according to the company’s latest semi-annual report released on August 30.
Baoshan Steel’s net profits declined to Yuan 7.8 billion ($1.1 billion) over January-June, while it produced 23.1 million tonnes of hot metal and 25.2 million tonnes of crude steel in the first six months, the company report showed.
In H1, the company’s total output of hot metal and crude steel were higher by 361,000 tonnes and lower by 1 million tonnes respectively, and it sold 24.1 million tonnes of finished steel products, down by 1.3 million tonnes on year, Mysteel Global calculated based on the data.
Due to production and logistics disruptions amid the country’s outbreak of COVID-19 cases in the second quarter, Chinese steel industry has been on a downturn, with most steelmakers posting prominent on-year falls in their net profits amid high production costs and dull demand from end-users.
As for Baoshan Steel itself, the sharp decline in its net profits was mainly because finished steel prices declined persistently in the first half while raw material prices hovered high, the company report noted.
Written by Villanelle Xia, xiayi@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
Leave a Reply