THE industry ministry said Tuesday it would remove 11 steel firms from a list of qualified enterprises, effectively banning them from operating, and ordered another 17 to rectify environmental, safety and other breaches or face the same fate.

The move comes as China, the world’s biggest steelmaker, aims to streamline its steel sector, which currently has around 908 million tons per year of production capacity.

Some of the 11 disqualified mills, including Xuzhou Dongya Iron and Steel and Guangdong Century Tsingshan Nickel Industry Co., were identified by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as having illegally added new capacity, being under bankruptcy liquidation processes or failing to obtain operating licenses from the local government.

The companies have until Jan. 16 to register any objections to being removed from the list; otherwise, they will be banned from operating after that date.

In the past three years, China has removed 48 steel mills from the list of qualified enterprises, reducing the total number of registered steelmaking companies to 256, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, 17 companies will be given a limited, though unspecified, time to rectify problems uncovered that relate to the safety, environmental and the capacity cutting mission, the MIIT said.(SD-Agencies)