Bloomberg reports that China aims to increase scrap steel purchases for steel production to160 million tons by 2015 and thereby reduce the reliance on iron ore import.
"The government aims to reduce the use of iron ore as a raw material and increase the proportion of scrap," - said Pan Luin, the Assistant Chief Engineer at the Raw Materials Department at Nanjing Iron & Steel.
Scrap steel may eventually account for 20% of raw materials used in production. "It is not always cost-effective to use the scrap, we also have to take into account scrap prices," - P. Luin emphasized.
According to the assessment of China Association of Metal Scrap Utilization, China may import more than 10 million tons of scrap steel this year.
It should be recalled, that China imported 503.3 million tons of iron ore in January to October 2010, down 2.2 % from a year earlier.