On the morning of March 26, bulldozers and cranes were standing ready on an open construction site.
There were not too many gorgeous ceremonies at the scene, but a sign that read “Steel Cord Factory No. 5” was particularly eye-catching.
This is an important construction site in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province. This project is the key finale of Zhongtian Steel’s layout in Huai’an.
With the announcement of the start of the project, construction of this high-profile project has officially begun.
Many people may be unfamiliar with the name “steel cord”. In fact, it is a steel wire structure that acts as a skeleton inside a car tire. The tire’s pressure-bearing capacity, wear resistance and high-speed driving stability largely depend on it.
As the number of global automobiles, especially new energy vehicles, continues to increase, the requirements for tire performance are also increasing, and the demand for steel cords in the global tire industry continues to grow.
This seemingly inconspicuous industrial material is actually a vital part of the manufacturing industry.
The steel cord industrial park planned by Zhongtian Steel in Huai’an is large-scale.
The five factories started this time have a total construction area of more than 220,000 square meters, which is equivalent to the size of more than 30 standard football fields.
Its planned annual output of 280,000 tons of steel cord has been systematically designed from factory layout to production process.
The person in charge of the site mentioned the key word “intelligent”.
In the past, steel cord production was a typical heavy industry with complex processes and numerous equipment, which required extremely high production stability.
Nowadays, many companies are transforming towards automation and digitalization, through equipment automatically monitoring parameters and production lines adjusting rhythm in real time. Many links that originally relied on the experience of master craftsmen can now be completed by relying on system algorithms.
This concept of Zhongtian Steel has been fully reflected in the Huai’an project.
The entire base plans to produce 1.6 million tons of ultra-high-strength high-quality steel cord annually, with a total investment of 20.2 billion yuan, making it the largest of its kind in China.
The park consists of multiple branch factories to form a production system. Factory 1, Factory 2, Factory 3, Factory 6, Factory 7, etc. have been put into production or are under construction.
The fifth factory is called the “final factory” by the outside world, because its implementation will make the structure of the entire steel cord industrial park more complete, and the production capacity connection and process matching between different production lines will form a closed loop.
The impact of a project of this scale on the local economy is self-evident.
In recent years, Huaian has been committed to turning heavy industrial projects into industrial clusters rather than isolated factories.
Because the driving role of a single enterprise is limited, only upstream and downstream enterprises can gather to form a stable supply chain, and the industry can continue to develop and grow.
As the core product of the industrial chain, steel cord connects high-quality steel and metal processing equipment companies upstream, and is directly related to tire manufacturing companies downstream.
A whole supporting industry chain can be derived around it, from logistics to mechanical processing and material research and development.
Therefore, “chain-owner projects” like this have always been the focus of investment promotion in various places.
As a large domestic steel company, Zhongtian Steel has invested heavily in the field of special steel materials.
Steel cords are high value-added steel products that require high technology and stability.
The industrial park has made clear its development direction of high-end, intelligent and green development from the very beginning.
In terms of environmental protection, traditional steel plants are often labeled as having high energy consumption and high emissions, but the Huaian project fully considered environmental factors during the design stage.
For example, the pickling process in the production of steel cords will produce waste acid. The project adopts a recycling treatment model to achieve “zero delivery” of waste acid. The park planning also introduces a green power supply system, with part of the power coming from new energy sources. At the same time, the energy efficiency of the production equipment is optimized, so that the comprehensive energy consumption per ton of products is at the leading level in the industry.
According to the current construction progress, the entire base is planned to be completed and reached capacity by the end of 2027, when the production capacity of 1.6 million tons of steel cord will be fully released.
Against the background of high concentration in the global steel cord industry, companies with large scale and stable quality are more likely to obtain long-term orders from tire companies.
Domestic tire factories have accelerated their overseas expansion in recent years, and a stable supply of supporting materials will enhance the competitiveness of the entire industry chain.
This project also reflects the trend of China’s manufacturing industry moving towards the field of high-end materials. Many traditional steel companies are transforming from “producing more steel” to “producing good steel”, and subdivided areas such as steel cord have become new focuses of competition.
I believe that in the near future, this area that is still a construction site will be transformed into a high-speed modern production line, contributing to the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry.
