【ferro-alloys.com】

  The world's top 500 company, Castle Peak Holdings Group, plans to build a new steel plant in Zimbabwe, Africa. The project is scheduled to start in May this year.

  Chinese company Qingshan holdings will develop and build an iron mine and a new steel plant in Zimbabwe this year, information minister Monica mutsvangwa said on March 9, Reuters reported on March 10.

  The opening ceremony of the iron ore and steel plant will be held in May in vuma, south of the country's capital, Harare, she said in a statement.

  Headquartered in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, established in 1988, Qingshan holdings is the largest stainless steel manufacturer in China with a crude steel output of 10.65 million tons in 2019.

  On the Fortune Global 500 list in 2020, Castle Peak holdings ranked 329, up 32 places from the previous year. The company's revenue in 2019 was $34.2 billion (about RMB 222.5 billion), with more than 56000 employees.

  As of press release, interface news could not contact Qingshan holdings to respond to the overseas investment.

  In June 2018, Castle Peak signed a $1 billion framework agreement with the Zimbabwean government, Reuters reported. The agreement includes the construction of a steel plant with an annual capacity of 2 million tons, as well as mining rights for chromium, nickel, iron and coal. In 2019, Qingshan holdings will expand its investment plan to build a new 600 MW power plant and exploit local lithium resources.

  According to the information disclosed on Qingshan Holdings' official website, the company already has a production base called affine in West mashonalan province of Zimbabwe, which is used for smelting ferrochrome.

  Chromite is an important raw material for smelting stainless steel, which can enhance the corrosion resistance of stainless steel products. Zimbabwe is one of the countries with the largest chromium reserves in the world. Aoyama Holdings has called it an important part of the company's stainless steel industry chain. The smelting production base was officially opened in November 2013.

  In addition to Zimbabwe, Castle Peak holdings also has production bases in Indonesia, the United States and India, involving chromium, nickel, iron mining and stainless steel smelting. Qingshan holdings is not the only domestic steel company to lay out steel production bases overseas.

  In 2016, Hegang group offered 46 million euros (about 339 million yuan) to acquire Smederevo, the only steel plant in Serbia. The state-owned enterprise in Serbia has a history of one hundred years and has a steel production capacity of 2.2 million tons. In the year when Hegang group incorporated it into its management, smedalevo steel plant made profits, ending the company's seven consecutive years of losses.

  In 2019, Hegang group will make another move. The company spent 2.2 billion yuan to acquire 70% equity of Tata Steel Group in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. In the future, hesteel group and Tata Steel will jointly operate the above-mentioned steel production bases in Southeast Asia.

  With the help of M & A, Jingye group, a private steel enterprise, also had its own overseas production base last year. In March 2020, it successfully acquired British steel, the second largest steel producer in the UK. The deal is priced at 70 million pounds (about 630 million yuan).

  British iron and steel company suffered losses for many years. It made a short profit in 2017, then fell back into losses due to brexit, and entered into bankruptcy liquidation in 2019.

  In March 10th, dedicated iron and steel announced on the official website that despite the adverse effects of COVID-19, the British Steel Corp realized profitability in February this year.

  In the past two years, China Baowu has also repeatedly proposed the intention of laying out overseas production bases of the sea rail. China's one belt, one road chairman, Chen Derong, said in an interview with the interface news that China's treasure is seeking to deploy the director's process and the whole process steel manufacturing base abroad, mainly considering the European and American regions and the "one belt and one road" line. In terms of production scale, Baowu is currently the largest steel company in the world, and all its steel production bases are located in China.

• [Editor:Catherine Ren]