China's coke output to exceed 345 mln tons in 2009
Shanghai. December 14. INTERFAX-CHINA - China's coke production is expected to rise above 345 million tons in 2009, as a result of high crude steel output during the period, a senior official from the China Coking Industry Association (CCIA) said at a conference on Dec. 12?
"China's monthly coke output has witnessed year-on-year growth since June, after falling for nine consecutive months. The turnaround was due to China's high crude steel output, which I expect to increase by over 9 percent on an annual basis," Huang Jingan, chairman of the CCIA said at the 2010 Steel Industrial Summit in Shanghai?
Huang expects China's crude steel and pig iron output to reach highs of 570 million tons and 550 million tons respectively in 2009. He predicts the country's crude steel output will grow above 600 million tons in 2010, which will support coke output.
China produced 518.18 million tons of crude steel during the first 11 months of 2009 and 285 million tons of coke during the first 10 months of this year.
In 2009, China closed outdated production facilities with a capacity of between 14 million tons and 20 million tons. However, newly built coke production facilities had a combined capacity of as high as 21 million tons by the end of October, which worsened China's coke production capacity surplus, according to Huang. The current domestic coke production capacity stands at above 400 million tons.
-LCL