Supply and demand of DRI in China
Limited by resources, technology and other factors, the production of DRI (direct reduced iron) in China started late and developed slowly. The production enterprises of DRI in China are small in scale, mainly produced by tunnel kilns, scattered in origin and unstable in production organization, which lead to the difficulties in production statistics. The products are mostly used in powder metallurgy raw materials.
According to the survey conducted by the Direct reduced Iron Working Committee of China Scrap Iron Application Association, the current production capacity of DRI in China is about 1.11 million tons (see Table 1 for details), which is less than 1% of the global production capacity, indicating that the production capacity of DRI in China is seriously lagging behind.
In recent years, due to the pressure of environmental protection and production limit, more and more tunnel kiln DRI factories which suffer financial pressure and inability to carry out environmental protection transformation have chosen to stop production or change industries, and there are very few manufacturers engaged in steelmaking sponge iron production. In addition, as China's "One Belt, One Road" policy has been recognized and responded by more and more countries, foreign exchanges and cooperation are increasing, and some high-quality and low-cost foreign resources have been introduced into China.
Table 1 Some of the existing enterprises producing DRI in China and their designed production capacity
The number of enterprises listed in the above table is actually used in the production of DRI for steelmaking is not large, which is extremely disproportionate to the fact that our country's crude steel output accounts for more than half of the world's total.
