Gold-priced steel: China’s tech breakthrough shatters Western market dominance
- China once had to pay a premium to import thin steel foil essential for a wide range of hi-tech products from the West and Japan
- Tsingtuo Group says it has rolled out 0.015mm thin foil, three years after state-owned Tisco achieved the feat, in further boost to domestic sector
Engineers in China are producing ultra-thin stainless steel sheets that once cost as much as gold to import – breaking a previous reliance on other countries to provide the product.
Tsingtuo Group announced it had successfully rolled out “steel foil” of just 0.015mm (0.0006 inch) thickness, equal to a quarter of the thickness of a sheet of paper or one-third that of a strand of human hair.
Their “hand-torn steel” was the thinnest possible in the world, the privately held firm claimed in a post on their official WeChat social media page last month.
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China’s creation of a domestic industry for high-end ultra-thin stainless steel sheets – called steel foil when they are less than 0.05mm thick – began only a few years ago.
Despite China being the largest producer of steel worldwide, foil production used to be dominated by Japan, Germany, and the United States, from whom China had to import at a high premium.
The per gram cost was roughly the same as that of gold, according to state media reports.
Steel production in China has been focused on low to mid-end products, according to an analysis done last year by China Merchants Securities.