On 3 September, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced a series of new regulations to fine-tune the domestic iron and steel industry to make it more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, SteelOrbis reports China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency as saying. The new regulations relate to stricter requirements on quality of products, energy consumption, emissions, technology and equipment standards, production scale as well as social responsibility for Chinese iron and steel companies.

The new regulations state that iron and steel companies in China are forbidden to produce a list of obsolete products, including hot rolled silicon steel. Furthermore, powder dust emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions and water consumption should not exceed 1.19 kg, 1.63 kg and 4.1 cubic meters respectively per tonne of steel produced.

With regards to equipment capacity requirements, shaft furnaces should exceed 400 cubic meters, converter or electric furnaces should exceed 30 tonnes, while high-alloy steel furnaces should be of over 10 tonne capacity.

With regards to production scale, a company which produces common steel products should have an annual output capacity of not less than one million tonnes as of 2012, while a company which produces special steel products should have an annual output capacity of 300,000 tonnes or above as of the same year.

Furthermore, any serious accidents could deprive a company of permission to produced.

The new regulations will be enforced as of 1 October 2012, replacing the previous regulations formulated in June 2010.