BaoSteel's Xinjiang Subsidiary Building Blast Furnace

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The BaoSteel Group's Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel Company Limited (Bayi Steel) (Urumqi, Xinjiang Autonomous Region) recently finished construction on a blast furnace and will continue to build another one this year. The furnace was finished on February 27, 2008, and had already produced about 100 tons of iron on February 28, 2008. It was designed to produce 1.75 million tons of every year.

The $140.8 million, 2,500-cubic-meter blast furnace is the first one over 1,000 cubic meters in Xinjiang. Bayi Steel adopted energy-efficient, pollution-reducing techniques, specifically the blast furnace top gas recovery turbine unit in the furnace's design. Bayi Steel started construction on the furnace - the first blast furnace project after it joined the BaoSteel Group in early 2007 - in November 2006.

According to current plans, the company will finish another 2,500-cubic-meter blast furnace by November 2008. The following construction is accompanied by cove oven, converter and medium plate projects. The two blast furnaces will raise the company's annual capacity to more than 8 million tons a year, making it more competitive in western China.

Bayi Steel will also build three 120-ton converters, four 55-hole coke ovens, two large sinter machines and related equipment before 2010. These projects will be in Bayi Steel's new 4 million-ton-per-annum production base and will cost about $211.3 million.

Bayi Steel was established in 1951 and restructured in 2007 to be controlled by BaoSteel Group. Currently, it is able to produce 4 million tons of steel products every year worth $1.7 billion. It has iron ore mines, pellet production lines, coal preparation plants and other related facilities in Xinjiang.

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