"Change" and "Change" of China's Steel Enterprises from the Global List of 50 Big Steel Enterprises

Release time：Jun 27, 2019 From：admin

In China's iron and steel circles, there was a saying that Yan and Zhao (Hebei Province) produced more steel than the United Kingdom and the United States. This remark, though full of banter and exaggeration, truly reflects the scale advantage of China's iron and steel industry in the world. This is perfectly explained in the World Iron and Steel Statistics 2019 released by the World Iron and Steel Association on June 3.

According to the crude steel output in 2018, World Iron and Steel Statistics 2019 ranks the global iron and steel enterprises, and publishes the list of 50 major steel enterprises in the world. As the world's largest steel company, Ancelemittal is the top one with 96.42 million tons of crude steel output (an increase of 970,000 tons compared with the same period last year). Hebei Donghai Special Steel ranks last in the list with 7.61 million tons of crude steel output, and its crude steel output is 350,000 tons more than that of Kobe Steel, the last of the world's 50 largest steel companies last year. Thus, in the past year, despite the slowdown of global steel consumption growth, crude steel production is still in the expansion range.

In this new list of the world's 50 largest steel companies, the most impressive performance is still China's steel companies. Throughout the list, China continued to consolidate its scale advantage with 28 enterprises (2 more than last year). Especially in the top 10 list, 6 of them are Chinese iron and steel enterprises.

But at the same time, the short board of low industrial concentration in China's iron and steel industry has also been exposed. There are 28 Chinese iron and steel enterprises in the world's 50 largest iron and steel enterprises, which reflects the highly decentralized state of China's iron and steel industry, and the degree of industrial concentration needs to be improved. From the perspective of output scale, Baowu Group, which has the largest output among the listed steel enterprises, has an annual output of 67.43 million tons, while Donghai Special Steel, Hebei Province, which has the smallest output, has an annual output of only 7.61 million tons. It can be seen that there is still a certain gap in the scale between Chinese iron and steel enterprises.

However, despite the long-standing labels of "quantity advantage" and "low industrial concentration", this year's list also reflects some new and gratifying changes in Chinese steel enterprises.

On the one hand, mergers and acquisitions are becoming a new way for Chinese iron and steel enterprises to rapidly increase crude steel production and bring scale effect into play. This is reflected in Jianlong Group, which for the first time entered the list of the world's top 10 iron and steel enterprises this year. In the list published in 2018, Jianlong Group ranked 17th in the world with 16.45 million tons of crude steel output, while this year's list surpassed Shougang Group in 9th with 27.88 million tons of crude steel output. In just one year, crude steel output increased by 11.43 million tons, which was due to mergers and acquisitions.

On the other hand, the productivity improvement of Youte Steel is also a new change for Chinese iron and steel enterprises. This change is mainly reflected in the newly-listed Qingshan Holding Group and Fangda Group. This shows that, as China's iron and steel industry enters a new era of high-quality development, in the future, Chinese iron and steel enterprises will gradually develop from the advantages of capacity scale to the high-end areas of the industrial chain, and accumulate new competitive advantages in the process of continuous technological innovation.

The only constant thing in the world is change itself. Over half of the world's 50 largest steel enterprises are only affirmative of the scale advantage of China's steel industry, but we still have a long way to go in enhancing core competitiveness and building a "super steel enterprise" with international influence and competitiveness.