Ansteel Group announced today on its website the plans for factory construction in the United States. The group plans to establish four rebar plants and one electrical steel plant in phases. The construction of the first rebar plant has already completed land leveling and railway access.
According to Ansteel's announcement, its General Manager Zhang Xiaogang signed three agreements, including the "Equity Investment Agreement between Ansteel and the American Steel Development Company," with the President of the American Steel Development Company at Rockefeller Center in New York at 5:30 PM Eastern Time on May 13 (5:30 AM Beijing Time on May 14). The plan is to establish four rebar plants and one electrical steel plant in phases, with the first rebar plant selected to be built in Amory, Mississippi, close to customers, with ample raw material supply and convenient transportation. The environmental permit has been obtained from the state of Mississippi, and land leveling and railway access have been completed. The rebar produced by this plant will mainly supply the southeastern United States to replace imports, while also reaching emerging markets in Latin America and South America that have growth potential.
The Amory plant not only marks the beginning of Ansteel's overseas investment in factory construction but will also become the first steel enterprise in the Chinese steel industry to invest and build in the United States. Ansteel has expressed confidence in building a factory in the United States, stating that the reason for investing in the rebar plant is mainly due to the policy requirement in the U.S. economic stimulus plan that steel demand for infrastructure investment must be met with domestically produced steel. By establishing a factory locally, Ansteel can fill the market gap in the domestic wire and rebar production capacity while expanding its market and laying out its steel production in the United States.
U.S. New Home Starts Increase by 5.8%
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced on the 18th that in April this year, new home starts in the United States increased by 5.8%, seasonally adjusted at an annual rate of 672,000 units, better than the previous forecast of 650,000 units by economists.
The number of new building permits issued, which reflects future trends in new home construction, decreased by 11.5% in April, seasonally adjusted at an annual rate of 606,000 units, the lowest level since October 2009.
Driven by a series of government policies to support the housing market, the U.S. real estate market has recently rebounded. Previous data released by the U.S. government showed that new home sales in March surged by 27% month-on-month, marking the largest monthly increase in 47 years. However, this sales volume is still 70% lower than the peak in May 2005.
Since the bursting of the housing bubble in early 2006, the U.S. housing market has been undergoing severe adjustments and has become the root cause of the current financial crisis. Economists believe that recent data indicates that the U.S. housing market may have reached or is close to the bottom, but it may take a considerable amount of time to recover from the downturn.