Stainless Steel Industry Status quo and Development Policies in China's Zhejiang Province

摘要

Stain less steel is one of the steel products, the development of which is encouraged by the industrial policy of State for steel industry development. Stainless steel is an important raw material, which has special application value and a promising prospect of wide applications. Development level of stainless steel industry is an important benchmark, which indicates the development level of a nation's steel industry and also reflects overall national strength of a country. After more than one decade of development and accumulation, a setup of stainless steel industry, which has private-owned small and medium-sized enterprises as the main body, distinguished by distinct regional characteristics, and with civil consumer products and building decorative materials as the main body of their products, has taken its shape, thus becoming one of the important bases of stainless steel production. In 2001, Zhejiang province had more than 300 stainless steel making and processing enterprises, which produced total 480,000t raw stainless steel and 615,000t finished stainless steel products, accounting for 35 percent and 40 percent of the total productions respectively of these two types of materials of the whole country, ranking top in the whole country. Preliminary statistics showed that raw stainless steel production in the province was 670,000t for 2002, with processed stainless steel being 800,000t, both of which had a bigger growth compared with those of the previous year. Stainless steel products include plates, strips, pipes, bars, wire rods and fabricated products, with the number of sizes up to more than 300. The whole stainless steel industry in the province includes steel making, hot rolling and blooming, pickling, cold rolling and finished products processing, all of which form a complete industrial chain, with Ningbo being the base for production of plates and strips, Wenzhou for seamless pipes and Huzhou for bars and wire rods, which are stainless steel industrial blocks with regional characteristics and have significant influence in the same industry in the whole country.