On 23 April, the Shandong Stainless Steel Industry Association held its first conference in Shandong Laiwu. The Shandong government is hopeful that the Shandong Stainless Association can improve the unbalanced development and scattered distribution of the province's stainless industry and help stainless producers be more competitive, Kallanish notes.

Shandong province is managing the layout of its stainless steel industry across the citites of Jinan, Linyi, Zibo and Binzhou. It involves industrial chains of ferronickel, coke, crude stainless steel, hot and cold rolled products.

Among the companies, Taishan Iron & Steel has production capacity of 1.8 million tonnes/year of stainless steel. Linyi Xinhai hopes to produce 1.9m t/y of ferronickel but for now its production capacity is 1.2m t/y. Besides these, Shandong also has projects owned by Shengyang for 2.4m t/y of stainless, Jiangxin for 2.7m t/y of special steel, Yongfeng for 6m t/y of special steel and Hongwang for 1.2m t/y of stainless cold rolled products. 

Meanwhile, there are at least 90 companies manufacturing stainless steel pipes. One of these, the Huaye Group, has built up a production capacity of 600,000 t/y of stainless steel decorative pipes.