Over 1 million tons of lighter, stronger steel products using new technologies are expected to be applied to industrial use in China each year in five years.

Concentrating on such value-added products will help cool the overheated sector, said industry experts Wednesday.

Production will be around 800,000 tons this year, thanks to a five-year national steel products research program that ended in October. The program, called New Generation Steels, attracted about 40 organizations, including universities, steel makers and automakers, to work together to seek the optimal path for development of China's steel sector.

"China's steel sector is poised to produce more durable but lighter steel products that use new technologies," said Weng Yuqing, president of the Chinese Society for Metals.

So far, the country's 15 leading producers, including Shanghai Baosteel, Anshan Iron and Steel and Shougang, have made around 2 million tons of such new products as ultrafine-grained steel.

Weng added that this is a sharp turn from the irrational direction in which many investors have been throwing money. "When they saw soaring steel prices, investors rashly jumped into the industry to seek profits," he said. "However, lacking large initial investments, they just tapped the low-grade steel products market."

The newly injected money, most of which came from private investors, overheated and weakened the steel sector by wasting energy and resources.

"The sector is overheated in terms of the tremendous expansion capacity of low-grade steel products," Weng noted. "However, China's need for high-grade steel products is still rising and can't be met by domestic makers."

China, the world's largest steel maker and consumer, produced 222 million tons of steel last year, a year-on-year increase of 22 percent.

The country imported 37.6 million tons of steel, up 52 percent from a year before. Around 85 percent of the imports are high-grade sheet products.

(eastday.com April 15, 2004)