It is reported that recently Mr Zhuang Gang VP of China Steel Pipe Association of China Construction Society pointed out Chinese seamless pipe market should realize new developments in the days to come although it has suffered antidumping investigation launched by EU and US in early days.

Impacted by the world financial crisis last year, China steel industry suffered great losses boosting many steel pipe enterprises to reduce or halt production. And the production of steel pipes in China during January to August didn’t post an optimistic performance especially for seamless steel pipes. As learned, the national output of steel pipes came at 32.64 million tonnes growth of 9.53%YoY with that of welded pipes and seamless pipes at 18.97 million tonnes and 13.67 million tonnes respectively up by 17.6% or leveling off from the previous year.

Mr Zhuang told that seamless steel pipe production presented a declining trend month by month in 2009, like March output was up by 9.1%YoY and 6.3%, 5.01%, 3.8% and 0.20% respectively in April May, June and July while August output kept unchanged compared with the same period of last year and September and October is predicted to see negative growth. The major reason behind the shrinking monthly output is the insufficient demand both at home and overseas markets.

The data shows, export of seamless steel pipes was accumulated at 2.08 million tonnes during January to August down by 41.11%YoY. In 2008, export volume of seamless steel pipes accounted for 30.2% of the total steel pipe exports. And new export pipe orders eyed a drop of 50% YoY to 60%YoY this year. So some seamless steel pipe enterprises are in face of severe challenges due to slumping exports and home market demand.

Taking a look at global market, some countries have put forward measures to ease financial crisis, with economy slightly warming up in major countries like America etc. Meanwhile, many countries launched a series of antidumping duties on China made steel products. Internally domestic economy showed a sign of rebounding boosted by national demand driven policy, but still combined with uncertainties, which brought more challenges to enterprises in China.

Hereby, Mr Zhuang brought forward some measures to solve problems in Chinese steel pipe industry.

1. They should adjust products mix to enlarge domestic demand, further optimizing pipe products mix and proportion.

2. To enhance steel pipe industrial centralization. As per the policy, steel pipe makers should speed up its regrouping and backward capacity elimination paces.

3. They have to fully display export experiences and resources aiming to strengthen the long term cooperation between users. As predicted, export volume in 2009 will shrink 5 million tonnes compared with the year of 2008.

4. Pipe industry would regularly issue output capacity report and price forecast, and meanwhile, they’d better cooperate with the whole steel industry to further strengthen its risk prevention abilities.

(Sourced from MySteel.net)
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