Xiwang Special Steel Co, an eastern Chinese special steel maker, saw its finished steel sales volume reach 1.95m tonnes in 2011, an increase of 32% year-on-year, the Hong Kong-listed company says.
The company's new 500,000 t/y EAF No. 2, commissioned in April 2011, boosted steelmaking capacity to 1m t/y and was the main reason for xiwang's increased output and sales last year, Platts Steel Business Briefing learns from a company release. Xiwang’s revenue in 2011 rose by 59% year-on-year to RMB 8.5bn ($135m) in tandem with growth in production.

Meanwhile, the commissioning of the new EAF also lifted the company’s high-value special steel output helping boost Xiwang’s net profit for 2011 to RMB 909m ($144m), up 85% y-o-y. The company sold 710,239 t of special steel last year, up 519% y-o-y and special steel's higher proportion of overall sales helped lift Xiwang’s profit margin from 11% in 2010 to 15% in 2011.
Xiwang currently operates two EAFs with a combined 1m t/y capacity. Its finished steel capacity is 2.1m t/y. The company has an ambitious target of lifting the capacity utilization of its new EAF from the current 110% to 180-190% in three years, in collaboration with German engineering firm BSE. The company says it has achieved high capacity utilisation by increasing output per heat from 80 t to 95 t, reducing the batch time to 70 minutes and increasing the operating days from 300 to 310 per year.
The company’s specialty longs products mainly include round billet (for seamless pipes), bearing steel, gear steel, engineering steel and welding wires.