New Year address from Chairman Xuewen Xiao

Dear friends and associates,

I would like, on behalf of CISDI Group, extend my cordial greetings to you and your families, wishing you a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year.

2018 saw an all-round upgrade in the Group’s internationalisation. We have been tasked with a global view of strategic development and resources allocation in addition to going global for bid awards.

CISDI remains committed to its internationalisation process. A wide coverage of worldwide hot spot areas has CISDI’s footprint – Europe, North America, South America, India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Turkey – where the employees take the physical bases for consolidating and expanding communications and collaboration with the local clients and partners. A host of CISDI staff is working overseas for presenting and promoting the optimum products and services to clients.

2018 witnessed a surging dynamism of the Group’s industrial advancement. CISDI has been focusing on core technological upgrades with a stand on the high end of global steel industry. It has devoted, taking pulse of frontline of industrial chain, to reinforcing its competence in technological integration, systematic solutions and product-oriented applications of technology and services.

Striving for enhancement of its full-function, full-process and full-life-cycle services, CISDI has reaped successive milestone achievements in the past year – startup of Formosa Ha Tinh Steel’s blast furnace 2 in Vietnam and ASSB’s blast furnaces, billet and bloom casters, and bar and section mills. In the meanwhile, at home, CISDI has set out its design and services for Baowu Zhanjiang Steel’s blast furnace 3-centred system (an integrated system comprised of BF-BOF-HSM-CSM); abroad, CISDI has been energetically impressing the markets in east Malaysia, Australia, the Philippians, Indonesia and other BRI route regions, as well as Pacific rim.

2018 signified a major stride of the Group’s digitalisation. Intelligence and big data will be a major driver of progress for the metals industry and for CISDI’s future development.

We aim to synergise display of digital and metals industry. Digitalisation will impact all aspects of the metals production chain by changing the interlinking way of knowledge, technology and application and empowering the enterprises’ value creation with different solutions.

We have created a five-pronged capability system which encompasses intelligent and IT-based platforms, intelligent methodology and products, big data and cloud computing, automation and digital design. We just built Baowu Shaogang upstream-BF integrated intelligent control platform, a demonstration of intelligent manufacturing which can reduce the labour cost by 40 per cent by innovatively optimising the steel production organisation structure.

It is CISDI’s unique advantage that coordinates different disciplines and interfaces in provision of total solutions to a smart plant. Digital design is fundamental to intelligent manufacturing, in other words, Dark Factory or Smart Plant could not be realised without digital design. In a bid to re-collect various resources for those smart entities, we must see to it that the technological chain gets through from basic automation to data analysis, intelligent methodology and information platform, the integration between data acquisition and execution comes true, and finally, the data chain takes form from digital design to production and upstream management. CISDI holds it a common goal with our global clients through our concerted diligence and intelligence.

2018 marked the 60^th anniversary of the Group. The Group hosted a commemorative event at its Chongqing headquarters in mid December. Together with its staff and 30-plus partners and fellow enterprises, CISDI reflected on its 60-year evolution and looked forward to the exciting innovations and global projects on the road ahead.

I am proud of all the employees, the most valuable reserve of the company, and the solutions that the company has endeavoured to offer. I deeply appreciate the trust and support that clients have endowed to us. Only through doubled efforts for delivery of satisfactory products and services can we be able to live up to your expectations and co-operative opportunities.

Everything takes on a new look in the New Year. CISDI will stay true to creation of values for clients in spite of changing steel landscape around the world.

In this first issue of newsletter is underlined our commitment: We are ready to support you in pioneering the future of metals production and achieving an all-win result with our global clients and partners in the trail ahead blazed for industrial intelligence and greener, leaner developments.

January 2019

Xuewen Xiao

Chairman of CISDI Group