Domestic steel market operation in the first half of the year

my country's steel market has been running smoothly and improving in the first half of the year, with a substantial increase in exports

Recently, the reporter learned from the China Iron and Steel Association that from January to May 2025, supported by favorable policies, falling raw material prices and increased exports, the overall operation of the steel industry has been stable and improving.

Data show that from January to May 2025, key statistical steel enterprises produced a total of 355 million tons of crude steel, a year-on-year decrease of 0.1%; produced 314 million tons of pig iron, a year-on-year increase of 0.3%; and produced 352 million tons of steel, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%. At the same time, steel exports have increased significantly, with net crude steel exports exceeding 50 million tons from January to May, an increase of 8.79 million tons over the same period last year.

Since the beginning of this year, as AI technology continues to empower various fields, the steel industry has also been transforming and upgrading through artificial intelligence technology, becoming more "smart" and "green". In the smart workshop of Xingcheng Special Steel, the first "lighthouse factory" in the global special steel industry, the overhead crane shuttles in an orderly manner, and the AI visual inspection system is like a "fire eye", which can identify 0.02 mm cracks on the surface of steel within 0.1 seconds. Wang Yongjian, deputy general manager of Jiangyin Xingcheng Special Steel Co., Ltd., introduced that the furnace temperature prediction model independently developed by the company can provide real-time insight into temperature, pressure, composition, air volume and other data. Through artificial intelligence technology, it has successfully realized the "transparency of blast furnace black box"; the "5G+Industrial Internet" platform controls thousands of process parameters in real time, just like installing a thinking "nervous system" for traditional steel factories.

At present, a total of 6 companies in the global steel industry have been rated as "Lighthouse Factories", of which Chinese companies occupy 3 seats. In Shanghai, the largest three-party steel trading platform in the country, after applying AI technology, the company can process more than 10 million transaction messages every day, with an analysis accuracy of more than 95%, and complete hundreds of millions of intelligent transaction matching, automatically updating 20 million commodity information. In addition, AI technology can simultaneously review 20,000 vehicle qualifications and supervise more than 400,000 logistics tracks. Gong Yingxin, senior vice president of Zhaogang Group, said that through artificial intelligence big data technology, the driver's waiting time has been reduced from 24 hours to 15 hours, the waiting time has been reduced by 12%, and the carbon emissions have been reduced by 8%.

Experts said that in the intelligent manufacturing promoted by the steel industry, artificial intelligence has accelerated the coordinated development of energy efficiency optimization and green transformation. At present, 29 steel companies in China have been selected as national intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories, and 18 have been rated as excellent intelligent manufacturing factories.