Strong China's Iron Ore Demand Indicates the Market Expansion Such As Tungsten High Speed Steel

The domestic demand for iron ore is spreading outward, which also indicates the market expansion of downstream products such as tungsten high speed steel. Since this year, China's infrastructure projects have been started one after another, so the domestic demand for iron ore is spreading outward, so the mineral materials have become a new growth point of import, which also indicates the expansion of the market for downstream products such as tungsten high-speed steel. However, this may lead to the world's largest throughput port cargo can not be loaded?

Zhoushan has been a sea port of China since Tang and Song dynasties. Liuheng island of Zhoushan was also one of the three major ports in the East during the Ming Dynasty. In the past 10 years, Zhoushan port in Ningbo has been "the largest port in the world"! However, in this port with the largest throughput in the world, there have been a lot of wharves "linked" in the past month, which operate at a high level and can't stop. Moreover, the port can't be put down. What's the matter? What signals are released?

What's the matter?
This is because: even though the global economic growth rate has declined, China still maintains a relatively stable development, especially for mineral building materials, which has a very large demand both at home and abroad. For example, data shows that in August 2019, under the influence of typhoon, the iron ore throughput of Ningbo Port still exceeded 7.76 million tons, up 11.04% month on month. In fact, compared with the beginning of the year, the domestic iron ore inventory is still relatively low, and there is a gap of more than 20 million tons. Therefore, at present, the country's demand for iron ore replenishment is high, and it is expected to have a recovery period of 3-4 months, and the growth may slow down in the first quarter of next year. However, the increase of transportation volume also makes the transportation capacity tense. Therefore, since August this year, the global shipping price, as an important barometer of macro-economy, has significantly recovered, rising sharply, reaching a nine-year high.

So what kind of signal is released?
The import of raw materials (iron ore and other ores) means strong demand in the domestic market. In addition, China's demand has steadily driven the growth of Global trade. Experts analyzed that the strong demand of China's economy still drives the global commodity trade. Although, with the end of the purchasing season for agricultural products such as soybeans, the transportation of grain will be reduced in the next stage. However, the demand for sand and stone in domestic coastal areas is spreading outward with the commencement of infrastructure projects, and mineral materials have become a new growth point of import. According to the data, nearly half of the iron ore in the world trade comes to China by shipping from all over the world. Of course, more than a third of the world's coal, as well as a large number of non-metallic ores, agricultural products and so on are also shipped to China. That's why China's demand can steadily drive global trade growth.

But how can this iron ore be used in infrastructure construction, including buildings, highways, subways, etc? We need to know a little bit about iron ore and its downstream products. Iron ore is an important raw material for ferrotungsten smelting. What is ferrotungsten? Ferrotungsten is an alloy composed of tungsten and iron. It is an alloy additive needed for steel making (such as high speed steel).

What is high speed steel? High speed steel is a kind of tool steel with high hardness, high wear resistance and high heat resistance. It is also a kind of complex steel. The carbon content is generally between 0.70-1.65%.

According to the different alloy elements, high-speed steel can be divided into: Tungsten high-speed steel (containing 9-18% of tungsten); tungsten molybdenum high-speed steel (containing 5-12% of tungsten, containing 2-6% of molybdenum); high molybdenum high-speed steel (containing 0-2% of tungsten, containing 5-10% of molybdenum); vanadium high-speed steel, according to the different vanadium content, is divided into general vanadium content (containing 1-2%) and high vanadium content (containing 2.5-5%) high-speed steel and cobalt high-speed steel (containing 5-10% of cobalt).

Among them, tungsten high-speed steel is widely used in the manufacture of rolls, drills, reamers, taps, milling cutters, gear cutters and broaches. And these uses are more or less related to the construction of infrastructure. For example, what can roller be used for? Serve as the large and medium-sized section steel opening and roughing stands, strip mill roughing stands, supporting rolls; large, medium and small section steel intermediate and finishing stands, strip working rolls; large, medium and small section steel roughing stands; strip roughing rear stands, finishing front stands, cold rolling strip working rolls; hot strip finishing stands, small or wire finishing stands, etc.

Considering the target scale of "13th five year plan" in railway, highway, airport, rail transit and other fields, it is possible to achieve it in advance this year. It is expected that the growth rate of infrastructure investment will return to about 10% this year, and the overall cumulative investment scale is expected to reach 20 trillion yuan. Experts say this means that the production and application of downstream products of iron ore will be improved.

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