The north is the core hinterland of China's cable industry. Relying on its industrial heritage, complete entire industry chain support, and favorable policies from Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development, it has built a complete industrial cluster integrating raw material processing, cable production, new material R&D, and intelligent equipment manufacturing. The regional cable industry boasts an annual output value exceeding 100 billion yuan, with a solid industrial foundation and broad market space. Compared with the advantageous industrial clusters of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, the northern cable industry still faces shortcomings such as scattered industrial resources, weak industry-academia-research collaboration, and insufficient risk resistance capability of the industry chain. Breaking down collaboration barriers has become key to industry upgrading. will be held from July 23 to 24, 2026 at the Crowne Plaza Qingdao Jinshui, Shandong . The conference focuses on three major themes: industrial collaboration, green intelligence, and globalization. SMM , together with Runli (Shandong) Resource Recycling Industry Co., Ltd. , invites customers from the entire industry chain to gather, explore industry opportunities, and promote the quality and upgrading of the northern cable industry. Click to attend. We look forward to meeting you at the conference. Runli (Shandong) Resource Recycling Industry Co., Ltd. is a large-scale comprehensive renewable resource recycling enterprise in the Shandong region, focusing on non-ferrous metal recycling. It integrates online and offline collection channels, and has built a modern recycling industrial base covering recycling and warehousing, intelligent sorting, metal purification, and finished product production and sales. The company adheres to compliant operations, holds complete environmental protection operation qualifications and standardized management processes, strictly controls pollutant discharge in every production step, and takes resource reduction, reuse, and recycling as its core development direction. It helps reduce industrial solid waste, lowers raw material costs for manufacturing, and supports the regional green economy and the implementation of the "dual carbon" goals. It is committed to becoming a professional and reliable renewable resource recycling service provider in the North China region. Its business covers various types of industrial copper scrap off-cuts, waste cables, dismantled metals from obsolete equipment, comprehensive solid waste from factories, and other categories. It has a professional dismantling and sorting team and supporting environmental protection facilities, and the entire process meets environmental protection-related control requirements. It can stably supply copper scrap in large quantities, meeting the production needs of downstream processing industries such as cables, hardware, and conductive materials. The company has established standardized quality control and logistics distribution systems. Leveraging mature industry resources and years of practical experience, it balances economic benefits with ecological responsibility, proactively promotes the transformation and upgrading of the resource recycling industry, empowers resource recycling with technology, and builds a large-scale, intelligent, and green comprehensive resource recycling industry platform. Collaborate with upstream and downstream partners to build a low-carbon industrial ecosystem, and create a regional benchmark comprehensive utilization enterprise for renewable resources. Contact Information Shang Yiying 139 2018 5888 SMM Conference Contact Zhang Guolei 166 0190 0190 zhangguolei@smm.cn

On June 30, 2026, the National Energy Administration issued the Guide to Data Classification and Grading for the Energy Industry (2026 Edition), under which hydrogen energy was officially classified as a first-level energy data category, positioned alongside traditional fossil fuels such as coal, crude oil, and natural gas. This marks the end of the domestic hydrogen industry's single demonstration phase and its full entry into a development cycle characterized by large-scale, standardized systems. This top-level data system adjustment reshapes hydrogen energy's national strategic positioning, and by leveraging a unified data management framework to link the entire chain of green hydrogen cost reduction, storage and transportation infrastructure, and diversified applications, the industry is expected to usher in a new expansion cycle. I. Policy Iteration: The Strategic Status of Hydrogen Energy Achieves a Hierarchical Leap (A) Core Basis for the Document's Issuance The Guide serves as a supporting detailed rule for the implementation of the Data Security Law and the Administrative Measures for Energy Industry Data Security (Trial), delineating a total of 12 first-level energy data categories, including coal, oil and gas, and hydrogen energy. For the first time, hydrogen energy has been incorporated into the basic energy data sequence, integrating the hydrogen energy industry into the national unified energy security regulatory system. (B) Policy Evolution Trajectory In 2022, the Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035) legally affirmed the energy attribute of hydrogen energy for the first time, setting the goal of diversified commercial applications by 2035. With the implementation of this 2026 data classification document, hydrogen energy has completed its identity transition from a "demonstration and pilot industry" to a "national basic energy category." Industrial development has shifted from being driven purely by policy subsidies to a new phase where policy guidance, scenario validation, and market operations run in parallel. (C) Three Supporting Logics of the Top-Level Strategy Energy Security: Global geopolitical conflicts have intensified fluctuations in oil and gas imports. In 2025, China's dependence on foreign crude oil was 72.3%, and that on foreign natural gas was 43.8%. Hydrogen energy, produced from renewable resources such as wind, solar, and hydropower, can substantially reduce dependence on imported fossil energy while simultaneously fulfilling the carbon peaking and neutrality targets. Correction of Domestic Supply-Demand Mismatch: In 2024, China's total hydrogen production stood at 37.28 million mt, firmly ranking first in the world. Domestic planned green hydrogen capacity accounts for 52% of the global total planned green hydrogen capacity, yet the average annual operating rate of commissioned green hydrogen facilities is only 23.6%, with substantial electrolyzer capacity remaining idle. Unified data standards will compel the industry to shift from blindly expanding hydrogen production capacity toward demand-side development oriented to matching downstream consumption scenarios. Breakthrough in Global Hydrogen Competition: The EU will implement its Hydrogen Strategy Act in 2026, and the US allocates over $9 billion annually in hydrogen industry subsidies. Europe and the United States are accelerating their efforts to seize the discourse power in hydrogen standards and trade. By perfecting its local standard system through hydrogen energy data classification management, China aims to shore up its industrial digital shortcomings and enhance the international competitiveness of its hydrogen energy projects and equipment exports. II. Industrial Empowerment Value of the First-Level Hydrogen Data Classification System (A) Establishing a Bottom Line for Whole-Chain Data Compliance and Security The Guide uniformly categorizes all energy data into three control levels: general, important, and core, covering the entire process of hydrogen production, storage, transportation, refueling, and utilization. It specifies mandatory control rules: Geographic infrastructure data for hydrogen refueling stations, hydrogen production bases, and pipeline networks with coordinate accuracy ≤100 meters is classified as important data, with strict limits on external disclosure. Real-time operational control commands for water electrolysis hydrogen production units and sensor data from high-pressure storage and transportation equipment are classified as core data, with unencrypted external transmission prohibited. Electricity load data from wind- and solar-power integrated new energy plants supporting electrolytic hydrogen production is protected under a tiered scheme, with electricity consumption data from special-grade green electricity hydrogen projects implementing the highest protection standards. All enterprises are required to establish full-life-cycle data ledgers, mandatorily use commercial encryption technology, and simultaneously implement the protection requirements for Classified Protection of Cybersecurity 2.0 and critical information infrastructure, in order to avert risks such as the leakage of monitoring data from coal chemical and hydrogen plants or cyber attacks on industrial control systems. (B) Restoring Industry Investment Confidence and Reducing Uncertainty in Market-Oriented Development By year-end 2025, a total of 627 wind- and solar-power water electrolysis hydrogen projects had been filed nationwide, with a planned total investment exceeding 860 billion yuan. However, only 148 projects actually commenced construction, yielding a comprehensive construction start rate of 23.6%. The core pain point of the industry's sluggish investment was the absence of a unified statistical scope, cost accounting method, and operational supervision standard for hydrogen energy, causing capital to remain on the long-term sidelines. This policy improves the investment environment in three aspects: The National Energy Administration concurrently released unified hydrogen energy data statistical specifications, eliminating the need for enterprises to build their own differentiated data systems and reducing per-project digital compliance costs by 30%-45%. It is also aligned with 19 current draft national hydrogen standards for public comment, achieving bidirectional unification of data standards with equipment, storage and transportation, and refueling technology standards, thereby boosting the export recognition of domestically produced electrolyzers and hydrogen storage vessels. Standardized data furnishes financial institutions with a unified basis for cost estimation and project revenue assessment, substantially diminishing investment risks arising from policy changes. Supporting policies simultaneously tightened industry assessment: In April 2026, the National Energy Administration clarified dynamic elimination mechanisms for nine major hydrogen pilot regions. Projects are assessed monthly on economic viability based on operational data after commissioning; those without a stable profit model for six consecutive months are directly withdrawn, marking the industry's complete departure from the era of extensive subsidies. (III) Enabling Data Interoperability Across the Industry Chain to Revitalize Idle Hydrogen Capacity The Guidelines categorize a secondary-level hydrogen data catalog, covering seven segments: planning, engineering construction, hydrogen production, tube trailer storage and transportation, hydrogen refueling, transportation/industrial consumption, and technological R&D, thereby establishing a framework for data interoperability across the entire industry chain. Benchmark practice: Rongcheng New Energy built China’s first system for capitalizing hydrogen entire industry chain data assets. Its hydrogen big data platform aggregates data from all dimensions including hydrogen production units, tube trailers, hydrogen refueling stations, heavy truck operations, and equipment maintenance, accumulating a total of 21.08 billion real-time operational data entries. Leveraging cross-segment data synergy, the enterprise reduced its overall hydrogen production, storage, and transportation costs by 12.7% and lowered equipment idle rate by 18%. Meanwhile, the policy mandates that enterprises holding important or core hydrogen data undergo at least one security risk assessment per year. Cross-border data transfers of hydrogen technology and capacity data, as well as cross-enterprise data flows, must be preceded by a specialized risk review. This not only controls cross-border data security but also delineates a clear compliance pathway for domestic enterprises’ hydrogen project cooperation outside China, facilitating the export of green hydrogen equipment and complete hydrogen production processes. III. Conclusion Elevating hydrogen to a first-level energy data category is a landmark policy move that incorporates hydrogen into the management of the fundamental energy system. On one hand, through three-tier data security controls, it fills the gaps in digital regulation of hydrogen and mitigates cybersecurity risks in the industry. On the other hand, it unifies industry standards for statistics, operations, and cost data, alleviating three core pain points: idle green hydrogen capacity, investment wait-and-see attitude, and fragmentation of the industry chain. Against the backdrop of intensifying global hydrogen competition and China's dual goals of energy supply security and carbon reduction, data standardization will accelerate the large-scale deployment of green hydrogen, the comprehensive layout of storage and transportation pipeline networks, and propel hydrogen from a niche demonstration track to a core emerging industry that supports China's energy transition and participates in global energy competition.

From July 1, 2026, the new policy on reverse invoicing with unification of the three flows for the renewable resources industry will be officially implemented. The new regulation requires recycling enterprises, when purchasing scrap from individual sellers, to complete the entire transaction process through compliant online systems, achieving unification of the three flows—funds, invoices, and goods—and enabling the purchaser to issue purchase invoices in reverse. The prepayment of individual income tax for natural persons selling scrap will be significantly reduced: for annual sales of up to 600,000 yuan, the rate will be only 0.25%; the excess portion will be taxed at 0.5%. After adopting this compliant model, recycling enterprises will no longer need to maintain additional purchase ledgers or handle tax filings for individual sellers. The purchase invoices issued can be used as cost vouchers for VAT deduction and pre-tax deduction of corporate income tax. Meanwhile, individual sellers are reminded to complete the annual settlement of business income tax before March 31 of the following year. This policy aims to address the risk of issuing fraudulent invoices in the industry, regulate renewable resource transactions, and simultaneously reduce compliance operating costs across the entire industry chain.

June 26, at the 2026 SMM (14th) Minor Metal Industry Conference—Antimony Industry Forum, hosted by SMM Information & Technology Co., Ltd. (SMM) and with title sponsorship from Guangxi Yusheng Germanium High-tech Co., Ltd., , Luo Chengcai, General Manager of Hunan Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star Antimony Import & Export Co., Ltd., shared with participants the “Path of Transformation and Development for the Antimony Industry Amid Century-Long Changes.” I. Reshaping the Antimony Industry Landscape Amid Century-Long Changes Policy-driven: Export Controls Trigger Profound Market Fragmentation ►Markets outside China: Rapid Capacity Expansion Driven by High Prices Mine supply growing rapidly: The Santar mine in Myanmar has become a key variable, with monthly production reaching 1,000 mt of metal content and strong supply resilience. Smelting capacity deployment accelerates: Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam are rapidly boosting smelting capacity, with total ex-China capacity already reaching about 40,000 mt/year. Policy-driven: Supply-demand imbalance in the Chinese market Supply side extremely loose: In 2026, imports in the first four months alone have already matched the total for the full year 2025, creating unprecedented supply pressure on the market. Demand side highly competitive: Prices have fallen sharply. Geopolitical shocks: The Middle East war has caused irreversible damage ►Flame retardant industry: Short-term pain Bromine prices surged from 30,000 to 130,000/mt, petrochemical raw material prices jumped over 50%, and poor cost pass-through led to widespread industry losses, with production cuts of around 30%. ►Polyester industry: Under pressure from both costs and production Affected by wild swings in upstream petrochemical raw material prices, the industry's production costs have climbed sharply; with weak end-use demand, it was forced to cut production by about 30%, sharply increasing operating pressure. ►PV glass: Short-term cooling but long-term positive outlook Affected by the cancellation of module export tax rebates and uncertainties in the Indian market, short-term demand has weakened; however, the broader trend of global energy transition remains unchanged, and long-term growth potential persists. II. Opportunities Amid Crisis: New Opportunities for Transformation and Development Solid fundamentals: Consolidation and optimization in traditional sectors ►High-performance flame retardant materials Irreplaceability: Still cannot be effectively replaced in engineering plastics such as ABS and XPS. Market growth: China's annual demand for flame retardants reaches 1.5 million mt, with bromine-antimony flame retardants accounting for 35%, and demand is steadily increasing. ►Polyester industry Core catalyst: Over 90% of polyester units use antimony-based catalysts, securing a solid position. New growth areas: Industrial textiles are growing rapidly in sectors such as medical and new energy, with an average annual growth rate exceeding 10%. ►PV Glass Core Refining Agent: Holding over 80% market share, it delivers high efficiency with controllable costs. Strong Momentum Outside China: Driven by the global energy transition, demand in markets outside China remains robust, with countries such as India and Indonesia building plants on a large scale. Summary: The steady demand structure across the three traditional pillar sectors—flame retardants, polyester, and PV—combined with the continued expansion of emerging markets outside China, forms a solid and reliable foundation for the antimony industry. New Growth Driver: Condensed Matter Batteries, the biggest growth engine going forward ►Technical Pathway: Enterprises such as CATL are planning antimony-based sodium-ion batteries, in which the passenger vehicle segment will use a calcium-antimony composite material as the negative electrode. ►Demand Estimate: CATL has planned 60 GWh of capacity, with 24 GWh allocated to passenger vehicles. Calculated at 1,200 mt of antimony per GWh, annual demand could reach as much as 30,000 mt at full production. This represents a massive potential market. New Growth Driver: Rapid Growth in High-Value Applications ►AI Computing Power: The explosive growth of AI servers and data centers has driven antimony consumption in the semiconductor sector to over 2,000 mt. ►Military Sector: High-purity antimony is a critical material for infrared detection and missile guidance, commanding a price premium of 3 to 5 times. Against a backdrop of geopolitical conflicts, military-related orders surged 80% YoY. ►Lead-Acid Batteries: Used as a lead-antimony alloy in positive electrode grids, antimony significantly enhances battery performance. China's antimony consumption in this segment stands at approximately 13,000–15,000 mt, with global consumption at around 22,000 mt, providing a stable foundation. III. Value Normalization: Future Trends and Strategic Outlook Supply Side: Resource Constraints and Policy Regulation Become the New Normal ►Non-renewable resources and a tight supply are long-term trends China's domestic reserves are depleting and grades are declining, with production falling year by year. Incremental supply from outside China is limited and unstable. ►Domestic production restrictions and resource consolidation are the overriding trends The global static reserve-to-production ratio for antimony is less than 10 years, highlighting its strategic value. Strengthening environmental protection, implementing production restrictions, and promoting resource consolidation are the inevitable path for the nation. Market Mechanisms: Moving Toward Stability and Harmonious Coexistence Conclusions and Outlook • The antimony industry stands at a new historical starting point. Short-term market fluctuations and price pains are the necessary "drastic remedies" during the process of industrial restructuring. • We firmly believe that with the tightening of the supply side, the explosion of emerging demand, and the strategic emphasis at the national level, antimony's strategic value will be fully realized and will eventually return to its intrinsic worth in the tug-of-war between sellers and buyers. • Let us join hands and work together to propel the antimony industry toward a new era of stable, balanced, and high-quality development. The antimony industry is bound to have a bright future!

As the global green transition and the “dual-carbon” goals continue to advance in depth, the nonferrous metals industry accelerated its pace of low-carbon, intelligent, and high-end upgrading. As a core industrial cluster, South China featured a complete industry chain, outstanding resource endowments, strong policy support, and robust development momentum. Hosted by SMM,was scheduled to be held in Nanning, Guangxi, from September 9 to 11. Centering on five key themes—price trends, market trends, trade environment, policy direction, and low-carbon technologies—the conference aimed to build a high-end platform for industry exchange and cooperation. Guangdong Hongmingchang Technology Co., Ltd. sincerely invited industry peers from all sectors to gather in Nanning to make the event a success, jointly promote technological innovation and industrial transformation, help enterprises seize opportunities and address challenges, and jointly advance the high-quality development of the nonferrous metals industry. Clickto register for attendance now! Guangdong Hongmingchang Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2023 and was a technology-driven enterprise deeply engaged in the entire aluminum industry chain and expanding into markets in and outside China. Leveraging the industrial advantages of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the company adhered to professional, honest, and efficient service standards, providing one-stop aluminum product solutions for industrial manufacturing, construction and building materials, renewable resources, and equipment supporting industries. Main Products A full range of aluminum semis, including aluminum ingot, aluminum billet, aluminum extrusion, aluminum scrap, and aluminum processing equipment. The company established a standardized quality control system, strictly controlling quality, specifications, and delivery lead times. It offered both spot supply and customized services to meet clients’ diverse needs such as raw material procurement, recycling and reuse, and equipment supporting. In 2026, the company established a professional warehousing base in Linyi, Shandong, focusing on two major businesses: intelligent sorting of secondary aluminum and finished aluminum trading . It worked in close synergy with Chalco Group’s Linyi industrial base to build an integrated secondary aluminum industrial platform of “recycling—intelligent sorting—finished product sales,” ensuring stable supply for Chalco’s secondary aluminum projects and enterprises in surrounding areas of Shandong, and promoting intelligent and standardized upgrading of the local secondary metals industry. Relying on a complete supply chain and a comprehensive logistics network, its business covered the whole country and expanded into the Southeast Asian market, winning long-term trust from clients in and outside China with stable supply and rapid response. Upholding the business philosophy of “quality first, customer foremost, innovation for long-term success,” the company integrated upstream and downstream resources and improved industry services, striving to become a leading integrated service provider for the aluminum industry chain in China with an international reach, and to create new industry opportunities together with partners. Contact Information Chang Xinhui 189 3910 0161 SMM Conference Contact Ding Weiquan 18029344837

This week, ferrous metals diverged, with coking coal and coke extending their strength, iron ore making some concessions, and finished steel moving sideways. Early in the week, rumors about coal mine safety inspections continued to swirl, and expectations of supply tightness intensified, driving coking coal to its daily limit up. Against weak supply-demand fundamentals, iron ore took a path of conceding to coking coal and coke, while finished steel edged higher in a narrow range; later in the week, data on the five major steel products were released, with HRC inventory destocking continuing, the off-season effect on construction steel demand emerging, inventory destocking narrowing, and overall inventory pressure for finished steel also beginning to slowly accumulate......