Posted on 13 Jan 2011
China’s booming nuclear development is causing more of the country’s pipe mills to consider producing high-end nuclear tubes, including U-shaped steam generator tubes. State-owned Xinxing Ductile Iron Pipes (Xinxing) is planning to cooperate with a private seamless company Sanzhou Special Pipe (Sanzhou) to build a new project for the product. Xinxing and Sanzhou have signed a framework agreement to form a new company (currently Hebei Xinxin Special Steel) to operate new seamless pipe project which will be based in northern China’s Handan city in Hebei province. The project will also produce high-specification large-diameter precision pipes, Xinxing says in a release to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. “More details of the project, such as the capacity and construction schedule, will be published later as the two partners haven’t signed a final agreement yet,” a Xinxing official tells Steel Business Briefing.
The official says a new forging plant which Xinxing plans to build is likely to feed the new pipe plant. Xinxing is a major construction steel maker in Hebei province, whose finished steel production target for 2010 was 4.52m tonnes (its actual output has still not been announced), as SBB reported.
SBB notes Sanzhou announced in 2009 that it planned to a plant to produce 450 t/y of U-shaped steam generator tubes and 30,000 t/y of high-alloy precision pipes, but no further details were released.
Sanzhou, a 300,000 t/y mill located in central China’s Sichuan province, produces large-diameter thick seamless pipes which are used in nuclear/coal-fired power generation, as the oil/petroleum and chemical industries.
