A joint venture of the world's three steel giants, BaoSteel, Nippon Steel Corporation and Arcelor,was officially established here Friday to produce high-grade steelsheets for automobiles.

Located inside BaoSteel in Shanghai, the new company involves atotal investment of 6.5 billion yuan (783 million US dollars) and 3 billion yuan (361 million US dollars) of registered capital. BaoSteel contributed 50 percent of the capital, Nippon Steel 38 percent and Arcelor 12 percent.

The company has a designed production capacity of 1.7 million tons of high-grade steel sheet for automobiles, including 900,000 tons of cold-rolled sheets and 800,000 tons of galvanized sheets.

An official with the company said it intends to become the dominant auto steel sheet producer on the Chinese market. Its products would meet the requirements of all major joint venture automobile producers in China.

Full scale production will begin in June 2005, according to the company.

Source: Xinhua