Shen Wenrong, the founder of China's largest private steel company, passed away

Since 1996, China's steel production has ranked first in the world, accounting for half of the world's total for more than 20 years. Among them, Shagang Group, a leading private steel enterprise, is an important page in the history of the development of China's steel industry, and its founder, Shen Wenrong, is known as the "steel czar" in China's steel industry. Yesterday, the legend came to an end.

Jiangsu Shagang Group, a leading private steel enterprise in China, issued an obituary late at night on June 30, and Shen Wenrong, chairman of the board of directors of the group, died at 2:10 on the same day at the age of 78.

Shagang Group was founded in 1975 and headquartered in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province, and is now a large private iron and steel enterprise in China. According to the latest 2023 output ranking of major companies released by the World Steel Association, Shagang Group ranked sixth in the world with 40.54 million tons, down one place from the previous year, and the gap with the overtaken HBIS Group was only 800,000 tons.

This also means that among domestic steel enterprises, Shagang Group is currently second only to the central enterprises China Baowu and Anshan Iron and Steel Group, as well as the state-owned enterprise Hegang Group in Hebei Province. In the camp of private steel enterprises, Shagang Group ranks first in terms of scale. In the Fortune Global 500 list released in 2023, Shagang Group ranked 348th.

Shen Wenrong was born in February 1946 in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province (formerly known as Shazhou), a small village by the Yangtze River. According to the resume, Shen Wenrong entered the ginning and stripping factory in Jinfeng Town, Shazhou County, Shazhou County in 1968 after graduating from Jinfeng Cotton Processing Machinery School in Shazhou County and became a fitter. In the following years, he was promoted to the position of director of the machine repair workshop and deputy secretary of the party committee.

In 1975, in the above-mentioned ginning factory, the predecessor of Shagang Group began to take shape. Xinhua News Agency once quoted the "A Brief History of Shazhou County Iron and Steel Plant (1975-1984)" to record that in the early days of Shagang Iron and Steel Plant, there was no investment from the state, and the ginning factory raised 450,000 yuan to start with difficulty; Without equipment, shagang people will process equipment by themselves; There were no professional rolling workers, so Shen Wenrong took 23 workers to Wuxian Lutomb Rolling Mill to learn steel rolling technology, studied and trained for 28 days, and returned to work to operate, and the trial production was successful.

In 1984, 38-year-old Shen Wenrong took over the baton and was appointed as the director of Shazhou Iron and Steel Plant by the Shazhou County Government, which officially opened the curtain of his comprehensive leadership of Shagang's growth. In 1986, the steel mill was renamed Zhangjiagang Iron and Steel Plant; In 1992, it was renamed Jiangsu Shagang Group; In 2001, Shagang Group completed its restructuring, and Shen Wenrong became the actual controller of Shagang Group.

As one of the earliest industrialists after the reform and opening up, Shen Wenrong, who single-handedly built the largest private steel enterprise in China, showed his courage and determination. After taking over as the director of the factory, the window frame steel, which was not looked down upon by the surrounding larger-scale steel mills, was set as the leading product, which made shagang begin to emerge in the market in the 80s of the last century.

In 1988, Shen Wenrong withstood pressure and controversy and introduced an integrated production line of electric furnace steelmaking, continuous casting and continuous rolling with an annual output of 750,000 tons of rebar from the United Kingdom, which was called "the model of the third revolution in China's iron and steel industry" by the domestic steel industry. Shagang, which was hollowed out by his family, recovered an investment of 300 million yuan in 3 years, and Shen Wenrong proved himself with the further growth of Shagang.

Shen Wenrong then moved forward on the road of shagang technology and equipment upgrading. One of the more typical is that Shagang once again took out all its family resources and relocated the Hosch Steel Mill, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp, a veteran German steel company, from the Ruhr area of Germany to Zhangjiagang, which became a milestone in the history of China's steel industry.

After the "Century Relocation" and "Rebirth" technological transformation from the Rhine River to the Yangtze River in Germany, Shagang has built a world-class 6.5 million tons of long-process wide and heavy plate project, achieved a production capacity of more than 10 million tons, and entered the "first phalanx" of the steel industry in one fell swoop. This is also Shen Wenrong's self-proclaimed "second venture" when he reaches the age of 55.

Since 2006, Shagang, which has become quite large, has begun a journey of further growth, and Shen Wenrong has set his sights on other domestic acquisitions. It successively acquired Jiangsu Huaigang, reorganized Henan Anyang Yongxing Iron and Steel Company, and acquired Jiangsu Xinrui Special Steel. After this series of mergers and acquisitions, the annual production capacity of Shagang Iron and Steel has been further increased to 30 million tons, which has established its position as the largest private steel enterprise in China.

In recent years, two mergers and acquisitions that have attracted high attention are as follows: in 2017, the Northeast Special Steel Group was restructured, injected 4.462 billion yuan into the latter, and became its controlling shareholder with a shareholding ratio of 43%, and Fushun Special Steel (600399.SH) has since become a shagang group in the steel sector of shagang group (002075. SZ).

In 2023, Shagang Group, CITIC Co., Ltd. (00267. HK) competition for domestic high-quality steel company Nanjing Steel Refining has just settled. Shagang, who was the first to throw out the offer and was finally "cut off", failed to do so in the merger and acquisition, and Shen Wenrong, who has led Shagang forward for more than 40 years, was also unwilling. However, in the end, under the mediation of the court, Shagang Group finally voluntarily withdrew from the transaction dispute.

In addition, in the process of the ups and downs of the development of China's steel industry, Shagang Group has also been included in the relevant non-steel business segments.

According to the official website, in terms of the main steel industry, Shagang Group currently has 5 steel production enterprises in Jiangsu Province, Liaoning Province and Henan Province. Shagang's leading products cover all major categories of general steel, excellent steel and special steel products, forming more than 150 series, more than 14,000 varieties and more than 6,000 specifications, which are widely used in construction, shipbuilding, automobiles, home appliances, food, aerospace, national defense and military industry, nuclear power, petrochemical industry, rail transit and other fields, and the main process and equipment level ranks among the world's first-class iron and steel enterprises.

At the same time, Shagang Group said that while developing the main steel industry, it will actively accelerate the development process of the non-steel industry, effectively use existing resources, and gradually promote the implementation of a moderately diversified business strategy. At present, the main areas of investment in the non-steel industry include resources and environment, trade and logistics, financial industry, new materials, and service industry, with a cumulative investment of tens of billions of yuan.

After the death of Shen Wenrong, what will happen to Shagang Group, as the leader of private steel enterprises? The answer will be given by his son Shen Bin.

In fact, Shen Wenrong has gradually retreated into the background in the past few years, and Shen Bin has taken over as the party secretary and chairman of Shagang Group in 2016. Shen Bin is 45 years old, and the outside world has generally commented that he is relatively low-key. After graduating in 2001, he went to the UK to study for a master's degree in economics, and returned to China in 2004 to work.

After taking over from his father, Shen Bin once said in an interview with the media that his entry into Shagang was not an airborne executive, but a step by step from the grassroots level. "My childhood understanding of my father was that his hobby was to go to the factory. He believes that work is a happy and joyful thing. Speaking of his father, Shen Bin said, "The power of role models is endless, and I have been exposed to it since I was a child. ”

Source: The Paper