Posted on 08 Feb 2017
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, expects growth momentum to be sustained in the first half of this year, as China could tighten measures to curb steel manufacturing amid unresolved oversupply risk, a company executive said yesterday.
“We think Beijing might launch more policies to ensure price stability in the steel market this year, as oversupply problems are not yet completely solved,” CSC president Liu Jih-gang (劉季剛) said yesterday.
Given rising costs, the Greater Kaohsiung-based steelmaker has raised its prices by 12.6 percent for deliveries in the first quarter.
Liu said demand is resilient, which has helped boost CSC’s factory usage to 100 percent.
Shipments are expected to reach more than 2.7 million tonnes this quarter, he said.
CSC executive vice president Shyi-Chin Wang (王錫欽) told the Taipei Times that the wind power business is the firm’s focus this year.
Several local companies — including CSC, Delta Electronics Co (台達電), Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元電機) and Yeong Guan Energy Technology Group Co (永冠能源) — formed an alliance to develop offshore wind power last year.
Wang said that those companies are still discussing details of future wind power collaborations and hope to unveil a road map later this year, without providing a timetable.
CSC posted a net profit of NT$21.9 billion (US$705 million) on a consolidated basis last year, a 130.37 percent increase from NT$9.51 billion in 2015, with the company attributing the increase to soaring commodity prices.
Shipments rose 16.8 percent to 11.13 million tonnes last year, compared with 9.53 million tonnes a year earlier, company data showed.
