China’s Baosteel doubles investment in Aramco, PIF steel venture to $1bn

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Chinese steelmaker Baoshan Iron and Steel Company (Baosteel) said on Thursday that it will more than double its investment in a steel plate joint venture with its Saudi partners – Aramco and the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Baosteel said in a regulatory filing that it will inject $1bn for a 50 per cent stake in the steel venture, while Aramco and PIF will each invest $500m for a 25 per cent stake.

The Shanghai-based steelmaker will also reduce the financing collateral principal for the joint venture to nearly $1.1bn from $1.3bn, a separate regulatory filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange showed yesterday.

Aramco and PIF signed an agreement with Baosteel in May 2023 to build a steel plate manufacturing complex in Saudi Arabia. The venture will build a plant in Ras al-Khair Industrial City, one of the four new special economic zones recently unveiled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the country’s Prime Minister.

The steel manufacturing facility has an annual production capacity of 2.5 million tonnes of direct reduced iron, nearly 1.7 million tonnes of steel and 1.5 million tonnes of steel plates.

It will be equipped with a natural gas-based direct reduced iron furnace and an electric arc furnace that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the steel-making process by up to 60 per cent compared to the blast-furnace-based steelmaking process.

The products will be mainly supplied to the oil and gas, shipbuilding, maritime engineering, and construction industries in the Middle East and North Africa with Saudi Arabia being the venture’s primary target market.

The venture is part of an effort by the Chinese and Saudi governments to collaborate on Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and Riyadh’s Vision 2030 economic reform plan.

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