Hebei's Ruineng Trading Company plans to start building a new steel scrap recycling plant in Qinhuangdao city on 9 June. The company's designed processing capacity for steel scrap is expected to reach 160,000 tonnes/year, Kallanish notes.

The company plans to invest around CNY 30 million ($4.7m) to build the plant. It will be equipped with shears, crushers, mechanical claws, loader, large packing machine, and other supporting facilities and environmental protection facilities. The steel plant is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.

China increased its official steel scrap consumption from 90.1 million tonnes in 2016 to 147.9mt in 2017. The country began to reduce the number of induction furnaces in 2017. Since then 60mt of scrap consumption in induction furnaces which was not included in official figures, has been transferred to use in BOFs and EAFs. China imported 2.33mt of steel scrap in 2017, an increase of 7.6% year-on-year, and exported 2.23mt steel scrap in the same year (see Kallanish 5 June).