China's Spiral Steel Pipe Industry faces five major challenge

 The number of spiral steel pipes in China's steel pipe exporting countries and regions has further expanded. Among them, seamless steel pipes are exported to 149 countries and regions, mainly India, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates; welded steel pipes are exported to 184 countries and regions, mainly Australia, Colombia and Canada.

The development of the steel pipe industry faces five major challenges Zhuang Steel analyzed the main problems of spiral submerged arc welded steel pipes in the development of China's steel pipe industry.

First, repeated investment construction leads to overcapacity. In the past two years, China's steel tube units have not only been put into production, but also have high equipment levels. In particular, there are more than 10 lines of seamless steel tube units in operation, of which 10 lines are in the continuous rolling unit. According to the highest output of 6.15 million tons/month in June this year, the actual production capacity of China's steel pipes has reached 74 million tons. In addition, some non-steel pipe manufacturers have also built or proposed steel pipe projects. This will lead to further expansion of the spiral steel pipe overcapacity in recent years, which not only increases investment risks, but also exacerbates market competition and also interferes with the stability of spiral steel pipes for steel pipe prices. This is the main reason why the price of steel pipes in China has been at an unreasonable price for a long time.

Second, the price of raw materials such as iron ore continued to rise sharply, further increasing the cost of manufacturing steel pipes, and corporate profits continued to fall sharply. From January to August this year, China's average imported iron ore CIF price was USD 164.36 per ton, up 37.50% year-on-year. The prices of domestic raw materials such as iron ore, coking coal, scrap steel, tube billet and strip steel also rose sharply. At the same time, the domestic market showed a spiral steel pipe situation with oversupply. The price of steel pipe did not have a large spiral steel pipe. The price of spiral steel pipe of steel pipe only rose by less than 5% compared with the beginning of the year. High-cost spiral steel pipe extrusion has continued to drastically reduce corporate profits. The main sales profit rate of spiral steel pipe in the steel pipe industry is estimated to be only about 1%, which is lower than the historical low point and lower than the average sales profit rate of spiral steel pipe in the steel industry.

Third, the protection of international trade has intensified. Since China became a net exporter of steel pipes in 2005, the export volume has increased significantly year by year, which has attracted the attention of spiral steel pipes of international counterparts. Since the "double-reverse" investigation in Europe and America in 2009, the global trade protectionism has become increasingly strong. In addition to Europe and the United States, Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Argentina and other countries have also imposed sanctions on Chinese steel pipe export enterprises, or imposed high amounts. Anti-dumping, countervailing duties, or anti-dumping investigations, etc., will further restrict the export of spiral steel pipes for steel pipe products in China. In this regard, Zhuang Gang suggested that steel pipe enterprises should control the export volume and develop the export market into a long-term and stable spiral steel pipe market, instead of focusing only on immediate interests.

Fourth, a small number of high-end products can not meet the needs of users of spiral steel pipe. Certain types, specifications and high-end steel pipes with special requirements for quality have to import foreign products at high prices because of the inability to produce, or the quality is unstable or the quantity is insufficient. From January to August this year, China's seamless steel pipe and boiler pipe spiral pipe imports were 54.10 million tons and 54,000 tons, respectively, accounting for 30.84% ??and 30.78% of spiral steel pipe imports. Zhuang Gang pointed out that the development of spiral steel pipes for oil well pipes should be closely focused on oil well pipes including spiral steel pipe, nickel-base alloy, etc., which are resistant to high H2S and anti-CO2 corrosion, and spiral steel pipes with high joint strength and high sealing performance. High-end products such as threaded joint oil well pipes; development of spiral steel pipes for high-pressure boiler tubes, development of T/P series high-temperature resistant alloy steel pipes, stainless steel pipes and nickel bases for the construction of spiral steel pipes for supercritical, ultra-supercritical thermal power units and nuclear power units Alloy steel pipe.

Fifth, the task of eliminating backward production capacity is arduous. China's steel pipe industry production technology equipment level has the world's top spiral steel pipe, seamless steel pipe and welded steel pipe production unit, and there are increasing spiral steel pipe perforation + cold drawing unit and welded steel pipe hot-dip galvanizing unit. The latter production process involves the treatment of waste acid, waste water spiral steel pipe and exhaust emissions. Most of these units have low equipment levels and environmental protection facilities are not perfect. Preliminary statistics show that the perforated + cold-drawn units account for about 60% of the total number of seamless steel pipe units in China, and the output accounts for about 20%. The hot-dip galvanizing unit also occupies a certain proportion of spiral steel pipes. A considerable part of these units are the capacity of spiral steel pipes to be phased out or modified.