Steel industry urged to axe substandard facilities

China is to ramp up its efforts to rein in unwanted steel output, especially that which is substandard and polluting, in order to contain risks from excess capacity and promote high-quality development in the steel industry, key industry officials said during the China Iron and Steel Association's annual midyear convention on Monday.

As the campaign to cut overcapacity deepens and the industry's profitability increases, the risks of illegal new capacity also start to grow, reflected by the phenomenon that some steel companies play tricks to build new capacity, and the production of substandard steel reoccurs, said Wang Wei, head of the raw material department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

China's steel industry has achieved the upper goals two years ahead of schedule for cutting overcapacity set by the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), reducing 150 million metric tons of crude steel capacity, and has removed 140 million tons of substandard steel capacity, according to Wang.