The construction steel structure industry in our country started relatively early, and the industry standards and regulations have been continuously improved. The industry talents (including design, installation and construction) have gradually formed a scale, and some high-quality companies have begun to undertake overseas projects. Since 2000, the steel structure industry in our country has entered a stage of rapid development. The steel structure output has increased from 85 million tons in 2002 to 35 million tons in 2011, with an average annual compound growth rate of over 15%. The output in 2012 was approximately 39 million tons.
The application of space steel structures in China is extensive, accounting for a large proportion in the steel structure industry. They are mainly used in large-scale public buildings such as sports venues, theaters, airports, and railway stations. By 2012, the market capacity of space steel structures was approximately 43 billion yuan.
In industrialized countries such as the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom, steel structure housing is widely used, accounting for over 40% of the total housing market share, and a considerable scale of industrialized steel structure housing system has been formed. However, in China, the proportion of steel structure housing in the total housing volume is less than 1%.
Steel structure buildings have the advantages of high strength, light self-weight, good seismic resistance, low cost of foundation and base, large usable area, high quality, suitability for industrial and standardized production, being unaffected by construction seasons, and low overall cost. They are regarded as the representatives of green buildings.
The Forward Industry Research Institute believes that in recent years, the government has successively issued policies, such as the "12th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Construction Industry" and the "Guiding Opinions on Alleviating the Severe Overcapacity of Production Capacity", which all emphasize the need to increase the proportion of steel structures in the construction field and vigorously develop green buildings. At the same time, the scale of real estate investment and the construction area of commercial housing have maintained rapid growth. This has a certain positive impact on the development of China's steel structure industry. From January to October 2013, the sales area of commercial housing in China was 95.931 million square meters. If 5% of this area adopts steel structures, and assuming that the steel used is 50 kilograms per square meter, the demand for steel structures would be approximately 24 million tons, which is a huge market. In the future, with the continuous growth of real estate investment in China and the continuous increase in the proportion of residential buildings using steel structures, the expansion of the demand for steel structures is very considerable.
