Bloated China Steel Sector Facing Closures, Big Miners to Suffer
03/12/2013 - China's bloated steel sector is facing a wave of closures in the next few years, with slowing demand and decades of "blind" expansion finally about to catch up with the industry, a senior executive and parliamentary delegate said, according to a Reuters report.
China's bloated steel sector is facing a wave of closures in the next few years, with slowing demand and decades of "blind" expansion finally about to catch up with the industry, a senior executive and parliamentary delegate said, according to a Reuters report.
Zhang Wuzong, the chairman of the privately-owned Shandong Shiheng Special Steel Group and a forty-year veteran of the industry, told Reuters in an interview that China's problems would also scupper the huge expansion plans of suppliers like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, which have bet their future on sustained demand growth in China.
No steel firm will be immune, with the future of even state-owned firms like the loss-making Angang Group at risk, he added.
"The Chinese market is now oversupplied," he said. "The government knows it and we know it. 'Survival of the fittest' is the only way to solve the problems…"
