It is reported that China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has announced recently, to suspend approval of new steel projects in Shandong to check the violations against environment.

As per report, the affiliated technical-innovation items for Shandong Rizhao Steel Holding Group Co Ltd HR sheet and strip project were out of line with regulations set by Beijing like to add new capacity along with old capacity elimination no longer expand capacity sharply in principle to build steel projects near coastal areas effective volume of furnaces should be bigger than 3,000 cubic meters and capability of converters above 200 tonnes etc.

The Rizhao Steel’s projects have started construction since 2006 without obtaining environmental approval of which main facilities like sintering machine, pellet production line, furnaces and converters were successively coming on stream from end 2006 onwards. Construction of its HR strip process line is also basically completed. Meanwhile, Shandong Weifang Iron & Steel Group Co Ltd also put into construction of its 5 million tonne steel project between 1995 to 2009 unauthorized; and the construction of 2 furnaces and 2 converters were out of line with the steel industrial development policy.

In order to deeply implementing the adjusting and revitalization plan, as well as to speed up the progress of ineffective capacity elimination and check blindly expansion in steel industry, MEP decided to suspend approval of steel projects in Shandong until after the above-mentioned problems were solved.

(Source: www.cnstock.com)