Construction on the No.2 furnace was completed in August, which was followed by a period of hot-testing before Liugang officially commissioned the of 3,800 cu m unit at the end of November, according to the post.
The second blast furnace is identical in size to the No.1, which was commissioned on June 28 last year, as reported. Liugang has plans to add a third furnace of 3,000 cu m inner volume, as Mysteel Global reported, but a source familiar with the company said the schedule has not yet been settled.
With three blast furnaces and four converters, Liugang’s Fangchenggang steelworks will eventually host a total ironmaking capacity of 8.5 million tonnes/year and 9.2 million t/y of steelmaking, as Mysteel Global reported. The total investment into the Fangchenggang project will be Yuan 36 billion ($5.7 billion), according to the post.
The steelworks will be producing a mix of flat and long projects including cold-rolled sheet, hot-dip galvanized steel, high-strength rebar, alloy bar and wire rod, the post said.
The Fangchenggang project was first approved by China’s central government years ago in 2012 and was co-developed by both Liugang and the then Wuhan Iron & Steel Group (Wugang).
Wugang, which later merged with Baosteel to form Baowu Steel Group, had been left to develop the project alone after Liugang pulled out in 2015 when it was losing money and the steel industry’s serious oversupply situation brought the project under Beijing’s increasingly critical gaze. The project was stalled for years until Liugang took over it again in 2018, as Mysteel Global reported.
Written by Olivia Zhang, zhangwd@mysteel.com
This article has ben published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel and SteelMint Research
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