In Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu Shagang Group Co., Ltd. has been established for 50 years. Over the past 50 years, this once large collective enterprise has grown into a "Fortune Global 500" company. The steel it produces still looks cold on the outside, but its interior has been completely transformed.

They incorporate high-tech: twin-roll Castrip, full-process digital control and management... Integrating the latest achievements of modern industry, it supports national heavyweights ranging from "Conquering the highest heavens" to "Exploring the deepest oceans".

They are more environmentally friendly and green: the entire process achieves ultra-low emissions, the energy consumption per ton of steel ranks among the world's leading levels, and a positive cycle of "resources - products - recycled resources" is realized.

Adhere to innovation-driven development and strive ceaselessly; anchor on the cutting-edge of technology and keep moving forward without pause. "Shagang Understanding its Destiny” is focusing on the areas of national shortage and making efforts to tackle key problems. It’s following the national strategy and adhering to the principles of "Brining In" and "Going Out", providing "Steel Strength" for economic and social development.

Innovative genes grow into "steel and iron bones"

Can molten steel casting and rolling be operated like rolling out dough sheets? This scene, which seems like a fairy tale, has already been realized in Shagang.

Entering the Castrip production workshop of Shagang, one can see molten steel slowly flowing through huge roller cassettes and rapidly cooling into thin sheets only 0.7 millimeters thick. Compared with the traditional hot continuous rolling process, this technology shortens the production line length by nearly 95%, significantly saves land, and eliminates continuous casting and heating processes, reducing unit fuel consumption by 95%, water consumption by 80%, and electricity consumption by 90%.

There are already four such production lines in Shagang, providing useful references for the high-quality development of the industry. But six years ago, Shagang's move was not favored by industry insiders.

In 2019, when we first introduced the CASTRIP technology from Nucor in the United States, many people had doubts. Because previously, some steel enterprises also attempted this technology, but failed to overcome problems such as production continuity and quality uniformity. Shi Yixin, the executive director of Shagang Group, said.

Facing difficulties, Shagang organized its scientific research backbone to work day and night to tackle the problems. They ingeniously arranged the spray equipment to better solidify the molten steel into thin plates and precisely controlled the temperature and humidity to reduce cracks... After more than four years of efforts, Shagang has achieved international leadership in core technical indicators such as the number of continuous casting furnaces, annual output, and the quantity of developed special steel. The "High-efficiency CASTRIP" technology system it has formed and won honors such as the "First Prize of Metallurgical Science and Technology Award" and the "China Steel Industry Product Development Market Expansion Award".

From being "questioned" to being "learned from", throughout the development history of Shagang, there are no shortage of such turning points.

Since the 1980s, giving up the life of "contentment with a small fortune", a huge investment was made to introduce a 75-ton ultra-high power electric furnace continuous casting and continuous rolling short-process production line from the UK, which narrowed the gap between the process technology and equipment and the international advanced level by 20 years. By 2001, the entire ThyssenKrupp Dortmund steel plant in Germany was "moved in", it achieved a transformation in production varieties from long materials to flat materials... Through repeated digestion, absorption and innovation, Shagang has achieved its own leap forward.

Since my father Shen Wenrong founded Shagang, he has implanted the spirit of "Persisting in Innovation" and "Not giving up until the goal is achieved" into the development genes of the enterprise. Today, China's steel industry has taken the lead globally. Like many of its peers, Shagang is confronted with an increasing number of problems on "no man's area". Only by persisting in innovation can we break through and move forward. Shen Bin, the Chairman of Shagang Group, said.

In the short term, the supply and demand in the steel market do not match. How can we find the right direction to avoid "intra-industry competition"? Shagang has shifted from "in-store sales" to "field sales", deeply connecting with customer needs and conducting customized research and development. For instance, the silicon steel products that the company is concentrating on developing can precisely meet the development needs of industries such as new energy vehicles.

In the long term, with steel production capacity under control, how can new ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency are found beyond scale? Shagang is promoting intelligent innovation in production and operation. By creating "Light-Outs factories", it is intensifying the application and promotion of intelligent manufacturing technologies in a point-driven manner, and working together with upstream and downstream enterprises to "Cluster Development and Chain Reinforcement".

Entering the Shagang Steel Research Institute, a group of young faces are either concentrating on the data on the display screen or sitting in a circle, bending over to discuss. Thanks to the systems established by the enterprise such as "tolerating failure" and "assigning responsibilities to the capable", these young scientific researchers are not afraid to "stir up trouble", turning one wild and imaginative plan after another into reality. Shi Yixin said.

In the list of "100 Private Enterprises in Suzhou with R&D Investment in 2025" released by the Suzhou Federation of Industry and Commerce, Shagang Group ranked first. At present, the Shagang Research Institute has 167 scientific and technological personnel of various types and has won more than 60 national and provincial-level or above science and technology awards in total.

The green concept links the recycling of resources

 

As the car drove along the Steel Avenue in Zhangjiagang, three huge semi-cylindrical buildings over 700 meters long stretched across one side of the road. This is a C-shaped fully enclosed material shed, which Shagang has invested 455 million yuan to build and is leading in scale across the country. It can store over 2 million tons of various types of mineral powder and mixed ore. The reporter stepped in but saw few people.

Dust and resource waste are prone to occur at the front end of steel production. To this end, we have adopted the leading intelligent equipment in China to model the material pile and used an intelligent dispatching control system to achieve unmanned operation, effectively curbing the "leakage" of bulk materials during the handling process and enhancing the "green content" of production from the source." Qiao Congsheng, the production director of the eighth raw material sintering workshop of Shagang, said.

For a long time, the steel industry has been labeled as "high energy consumption" and "high emissions". This is seen as a misunderstanding and also a spur by the people of Shagang.

It is undeniable that the steel industry is under greater pressure to save energy and reduce emissions compared to other industries. But today's production is different from the past. We benchmark against the world's top green standards and are committed to practicing green development. Gong Sheng, the President of Shagang Group, said.

Green development starts with hardware. Shagang has comprehensively implemented environmental protection standards and upgrades. It has cumulatively invested over 10 billion yuan in the "Four Major Governance Projects" of water, gas, solid waste and noise, and promoted over a hundred environmental protection projects such as desulfurization and denitrification transformation of coking and sintering. It was the first in Jiangsu Province to pass the full-process ultra-low emission public notice of the China Iron and Steel Association.

Green development, resource management reveals the truth. "How to squeeze the most out of resources like iron ore and coke is a subject we have been constantly pondering." “Chen Xiaodong, the executive deputy secretary of the Party Committee of Shagang Group, said that Shagang's solution is "recycling and utilization".

For the steel slag in the production process, Shagang adopts magnetic separation, crushing and other processes to regenerate "industrial solid waste" into materials that can meet the needs of elevator counterweights, road paving, etc. For water resources, Shagang has implemented water-saving technological transformation projects such as dry gas dust removal, enabling "industrial wastewater" to be treated on-site and reused nearby.

Green development opens up new paths in technology and process. Shagang has built a smart energy management and control system. By developing exclusive "AI algorithms", it realizes predictive management and control of various types of energy, and then conducts refined management throughout the entire process, including energy planning and energy dispatching.

At the control center of up-stream ironmaking process of Shagang Steel, the reporter saw that there were only about forty staff members in the huge monitoring room. We consume over 100,000 tons of materials every day. The number of personnel needed in the past was five times that of now. More importantly, in the past, it took at least half an hour to respond to faults, now the system is fully automated and can solve problems within 1 to 2 seconds. This saves over 10 million yuan in energy costs annually and increases production by more than 9%." Han Xu, assistant to the director of the second workshop of the Ironmaking plant, said.

Walking in today's Shagang, green plants can be seen everywhere, and the clean wharf coastline has grown into a "Green Corridor of the Yangtze River". In 2024, Shagang was recognized as a pilot for the construction of a "Waste-free Group" in Jiangsu Province. At the beginning of this year, Shagang was honored as an advanced enterprise in the three-year action plan for energy efficiency benchmarks of the 2024 Steel Extreme Energy Efficiency Project by the China Iron and Steel Association.

 

The goal of serving the country through industry sets a new development path

 

In the exhibition hall of Shagang, there are many thank-you letters, banners and trophies sent by Shagang users on display. A careful observation reveals that it includes the recognition of the construction units of "Pillars of National Strength" such as the "Long March" series of rockets and the "Shenzhou" series of spacecraft.

From taking advantage of the urbanization trend to produce window frame steel over 40 years ago to now closely following the strategy of building a maritime power by manufacturing bridge steel and ultra-high strength Marine engineering steel, Shagang has consistently maintained its strategic positioning in line with the country's development needs.

Over the past 50 years of development, Shagang has always been in harmony with the national strategy. Nowadays, how to explore new development paths under the background of "Development through Reduction" is a subject that the "Dedicate to the Nation through Steel" in the new era must consider. Shen Bin said that Shagang is systematically pursuing layout based on the dual principles of "streamlining" and "value-added development".

To do streamlining, one must look inward and have the courage to "cut off one's own wrist like a brave warrior".

Rebar is an indispensable building material and has a relatively stable market size. Shagang was once the leader in the rebar market in East China. However, in recent years, this product, which many enterprises regarded as a "hot commodity" capable of providing stable cash flow, has become the target for Shagang to optimize its product structure.

In 2015, due to the market tending to be saturated, the price of rebar once dropped to a "cabbage price", which sounded the alarm for us. Chen Shaohui, Vice President of Shagang Group, said that in response, Shagang has been continuously reducing the output of rebar, reserving the valuable production capacity indicators for high-value-added special steel. Nowadays, Shagang has reduced its rebar production capacity to one-tenth of its peak level, while increasing its special steel production capacity to approximately 3.2 million tons.

Doing addition does not mean blindly increasing the scale of figures, but rather accurately seizing market opportunities and enhancing the quality of development.

Domestic steel production capacity remains high, and many enterprises are under pressure. We actively respond to policy guidance, revitalize existing assets through mergers and acquisitions and reorganizations, and enhance resource utilization efficiency and economic and social benefits. Gong Sheng said.

In recent years, Shagang has successively acquired Jiangsu Huaigang Special Steel, Anyang Yongxing Steel Co., LTD., Fushun Special Steel Co., Ltd. and others. It has adopted an independent contracting model, empowering its subsidiaries with funds, technology and other resources while granting them great autonomy, enabling them to expand their niche markets through professional development. Among them, Huaigang Steel has become one of the main suppliers of automotive steel, and Fushun Special Steel has been making continuous breakthroughs in fields such as aerospace steel.

Rooted in China, Expanding Worldwide. Shagang actively responds to the national "Going Out" strategy and strengthens its overseas layout. In recent years, Shagang has established stable cooperation with 35 countries involved in the “Belt and Road Initiative” through measures such as building its own maritime fleet. In 2024, the overseas market revenue of Jiangsu Shagang Co., LTD., a subsidiary of Shagang Group, increased by 90.22% year-on-year. From the "world's tallest building" Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the "International Golden Corridor" China-Laos Railway, the presence of "Shagang's intelligent manufacturing" can be seen everywhere.

In the process of addition and subtraction, destruction and construction, Shagang is also exploring better development prospects for its over 40,000 employees.

In the early years when Shagang was just established, every time they recruited new staff, Mr. Shen, our old general manager, would personally take a look at the hands of the new recruits because if they didn't have strength hands they cannot do steelmaking at that time. Gong Sheng said. Nowadays, Shagang has reduced a large number of heavy physical labor positions by introducing unmanned "cranes", quadruped robots and other equipment. The manpower saved in this way can be devoted to more innovative links.

In recent years, Shagang has been vigorously promoting innovation among all employees and encouraging them to continuously improve their skills through innovative activities such as labor competitions. Not long ago, Shagang held the 11th release conference on the achievements of employee improvement proposals, and 16 innovative achievements from grassroots employees were commended.

Stay true to our original aspiration and forge ahead with concerted efforts. Recently, a huge vessel fully loaded with Catrip products from Shagang set sail from Zhangjiagang to Africa, contributing to local transportation infrastructure. Not far away, a slogan that reads, "Our determination is our resource, our belief is our future," remains eye-catching despite the storms it has endured.

Shen Bin stated that in the future, Shagang will continue to resonate with the national strategy, take innovation as the engine, and build up a "Century Shagang".