As the cost of stainless steel decreases nowadays,it has been commonly used in many areas, including construction, pharmaceuticals industry, and so on. For the large quantity need of steel, China plays an increasingly important role in the stainless steel industry. It’s necessary to know more about the products the Chinese stainless steel producer provide if you are willing to cut the cost and make more profit.
When we refer to certain kinds of steel types, we will use the generic term “stainless steel”. Iron and carbon are the main elements for producing stainless steel, Just like all other kinds of steel.
So where is the difference between stainless steel and other kinds of steel? The addition of chromium(Cr) and some other alloying elements.
Let’s take nickel(Ni) as an example, the addition of nickel can create a product with corrosion resistance.
All kinds of steel include iron, that’s why steel corrodes happen. Iron can combine with other elements in the air. Iron becomes unstable and easily combine with oxygen if we turn iron ore into a pure form for making steel.
Adding chromium to steel leads to chromium oxide. Which can effectively prevent air and moisture from damaging the steel. People always add chromium in the range of 10.0 to 30%. Specific number depends on application areas or environment where the steel will be used.
More than 100 different grades of stainless steel can be found in the market, but mostly they are grouped into five types.
People classify stainless steel into five major groups: Martensitic, Ferritic, duplex, Austenitic, Precipitation-hardening stainless steel.
This kind of stainless steel is similar to mild steel in its composition, but better resistant to corrosion, heat, and cracking. Ferritic steel
Ferritic steels in the standard need to contain 10.5 to 27% chromium and are nickel-free. For their low carbon content, people can not use heat treatment for hardening. It has a weak anticorrosion ability. Ferritic steel is commonly used in washing machines, boilers, and indoor architecture.
Typical applications include aircraft and the dairy and food-processing industries.
Duplex stainless steel is a combination of austenitic and ferritic steel in equal amounts. Also, it contains 21 to 27% chromium, 1.35 to 8 percent nickel, 0.05 to 3 percent copper, and 0.05 to 5 percent molybdenum.
This kind of composition makes it both more strong and flexible. Besides, it has better resistance to corrosion than austenitic and ferritic stainless steel. Duplex steels are applied in the pulp, shipbuilding, and petrochemical industries.
Nowadays, Chinese stainless steel factories are upgrading the duplex grades for wider applications.
Austenitic is the most common type of stainless steel we can find in the market. It contains 16-26% chromium and up to 35% nickel.
With the best resistance to corrosion and heat, it can keep the mechanical functions stable in a wide range of temperatures.
This kind of stainless steel would not be hard by the heating process. 18/8 or grade 304 is the most common type of Austenitic stainless steel. They all contain 18 percent chromium and 8 percent nickel.
Austenitic steel is used in housewares, industrial piping and vessels, construction, and architectural facades.
Read our previous article to get more information about different kind of stainless steel produts:
We can also divide Martensitic or semi-austenitic steels into precipitation hardening stainless steels. The addition of elements like aluminum, copper, and niobium is less than 0.5 percent of the alloy’s total mass, enabling these steels to be super strong. It contains 15-17 percent chromium, 3-5 percent nickel, and 3-5 percent copper, making it comparable to austenitic stainless steel as to corrosion resistance. Because of its strength, people always use it in the construction of long shafts.
Corrosion resistance is the main advantage of stainless steel, but it certainly isn’t the only one. Stainless steel is also:
Some certain grades of stainless steel contain specific quantities of chromium and nickel. These types of steel can resist scaling and retain their high strength even at high or low temperatures. From the application areas, we can get this feature. Stainless steel is used in a wide range of areas including heat exchangers, boilers, water heaters as well as aircraft and aerospace applications, and so on.
One of the reasons why stainless steel is popular now is its strength. As we mentioned above, its strength can be retained in both high and low temperatures. Lightweight stainless steel won’t buckle under the great weight, making it one of the most durable metals on the market. It can endure weight, hot and cold temperatures.
The third benefit of stainless steel is its cleaning. You don’t need to worry about cleaning. There is plenty of cleaners specific to stainless steel for you to choose from. Other than that, you can just wipe down the surface and stop your cleaning. Because of the corrosive resistance, it’s not necessary to use a dry rag to absorb the moisture left by cleaning.
People would not deny buying beautiful products. Appearance is a vital factor for choosing stainless steel. Its sleek appearance featured both classic and modern styles. The point we should highlight is that it not only just beautiful but highly functional too.
Stainless steel is recyclable. Recycled steel means less consumption of other valuable resources, reducing the energy consumption for mining. Researches have shown that every tone of recycled steel can save about 0.5 ton of coal and 1.5 tones of iron ore.
In 2004, only one Chinese company, Shanghai Baosteel, ranked among the world’s top ten steel producers. The other top companies came from the United States, Europe, India, and South Korea. In that year, only 25.8% of the world’s steel was made in China. After 2018, Chinese stainless steel producer have produced more than half of global steel production.
In stainless steel, the development is even starker: in 2005, China produced 12.9% of the world’s stainless steel, while Europe produced 34.8% and the United States 9.2%. By 2018, China’s share had more than quadrupled to 52.6 of the world’s stainless steel, while Europe’s share shrank to 15.6 percent and the U.S. share was only 5.5 percent.
According to the data from China’s special steel enterprise association, China’s production, imports, and consumption of stainless steel rose in 2020. China produced 30.14 million tons of crude stainless steel in 2020. The country produced 30.14 million tons of crude stainless steel in 2020, 2.51 percent higher than that of 2019.
China’s apparent consumption of stainless steel was 25.61 million tons in 2020, up by 6.46 percent from a year earlier.
These data would be amazing if we consider the novel coronavirus. The virus almost destroys the business of the whole world. However, no matter the output or the apparent consumption of stainless steel has been on the rise. From the upward date, we listed above, we can see that the stainless steel market still has huge potential, waiting for the Chinese stainless steel producer to unleash. China is projected to produce 32 million tons of stainless steel in 2021, up by more than 6 percent from 2020. This is expected to boost the country’s ferrochrome and ore consumption and increase imports in 2021 following falls in 2020
Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as “Baosteel”) is the largest steel conglomerate in China. With its comprehensive advantages in integrity, talent, innovation, management, and technology, Baosteel has established its position as a world-class steel enterprise in the international steel market. “World Steel Industry Guide” evaluates Baosteel as one of the top three in the world steel industry, and considers it to be one of the steel enterprises with huge development potential in the future. China. Baosteel is the fourth-largest steel producer in the world measured by crude steel output (after ArcelorMittal), with an annual output of around 40 million tons.
As a Joint venture, Guangxi Chengde Group is jointly invested in and established by Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group and Foshan Chengde stainless steel Co., Ltd.
Based on rich resources of manganese ore nickel-chrome Guangxi and highly concentrated nickel ore from the Philippines and Indonesia, the enterprise uses the latest process technology of alloy smelting to produce nickel alloy, which is further processed into slab base material of indicium alloy for forging rolling into final products—various types of stainless steel plates and strips.
Founded in 1992, Tsingshan Holding Group is quickly becoming a multinational corporation. Tsingshan Holding Group owns more than 30 companies, including Tsingtao Industrial Group, Ruipu Technology Group, and Guangdong J-eray Technology Group. In 2015, Tsingshan Holding Group produced 5.38 million tons of crude stainless steel with a sales revenue of 87.5 billion RMB. The Group has more than 20,000 employees.
If you want to get more information about stainless steel titan around the world, read this article:
Top 11 Vendors in the Global Stainless Steel Market
All the groups we mentioned above are the tycoons in the stainless steel industry. As more and more people step into this industry, many excellent enterprises have shown up, one of these enterprises is WanJiaHong.
With over 24 years of brilliant achievement, Wanjiahong has been recognized as a famous brand in the Chinese stainless steel decoration business. The companies are equipped with advanced machines, such as 5 fully automatic flatten & slitting machines, 8 PVD color coating machines, 6 mirror 8K polishing lines, 2 embossed lines, over 150 welding equipment, and 10 automatic packing machines.
Core products are stainless steel 201/304 decorative sheets, 201/304 stainless steel pipes, No.4&Hairline/Mirror 8K stainless steel coils.
If you want to know how to contact Chinese Stainless steel producer, read the article we wrote before：
How to Buy Stainless Steel From A Chinese Stainless Steel Factory
With the development of the projects like South-to-North Water Diversion, it’s no doubt that the need for stainless steel will increase. Automakers, machinery manufacturers, and construction companies are driving Chinese demand for stainless steel, a corrosion-resistant alloy that also includes chromium and nickel.
Stainless steel was mainly applied to some key industry fields in China before the 90’s of last century. Its consumption quantity was pulled up quickly by civil application (e.g. home electrical appliances, house decoration, and so on) since the middle and late 90’s, the use of tableware, cabinet, electrical appliances being about 50%.
In the next few years, stainless steel will be more widely used in civil engineering and construction, automobile transportation, machine processing, and manufacturing industry as well as
the environment protection field in China.
North America may witness significant growth in the stainless steel market for the increasing application of stainless steel in medical, oil＆gas and heavy industries. For the resistance to corrosion over a wider range of temperatures, people use high-grade stainless steel in the construction of Valves, pipes, and storage tanks. The growing adoption of stainless steel in the oil & gas industry for off-shore oil rigs is expected to boost the overall market growth in the region
Europe’s stainless steel market may witness a high growth deal to the stainless steel application in the automotive industry. Stainless steel can provide high strength for even thinner containers. Besides, stainless steel can help people to save fuel costs and minimize the maintenance costs for its corrosion resistance.
Other than the developed countries, the stainless steel consumption in developing countries is relatively lower, there is a huge market potential waiting for Chinese stainless steel producers to unleash.
In this article, we have shared some knowledge about different kinds of stainless steel and some well-known Chinese stainless steel producers. Also, we provide some information about the condition Chineses stainless steel producer face. In the last section, we listed some dates to provide an image of the future of this industry and Chinese stainless steel producers.
Hope this article can help you, if still have questions about Chinese stainless steel producers or have interests in our products, leave a comment or send us an email, we will reply as soon as possible.
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With over 24 years of brilliant achievement, Wanjiahong has been recognized as a famous brand in Chinese stainless steel decoration business.
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