In your country, Do they restrict to use material origin from China to build pressure vessel? 5

[pv_mkk]

Whenever there is bidding for new project, I always see customers restrict the using of pressure part (especially stainless steel) origin from China to build pressure vessels.

This restriction is still remaining like 10+ years as far as I've been in this field.

I am wondering that these days we still cannot trust Chinese steel makers in general, can we?

Is there any proper way to convince customers to remove the restriction?

I believe it can provide bidders more choice and saving more project budget.

 

[SnTMan]

Hoo boy. Popping the corn

Regards

Mike

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[shvet]

Some clients do prohibit to use pressure parts of vessels and valves origin China and India. The reason is low quality from small unknown manufacturers. This is an easy way to improve quality of a bidding position with negligible increase in price as materials certificates are more easy to control than deep QC&QA otherwise.

Experienced bidders submit for approval by a client some vendor list of proven&certified subsuppliers with reference-list and short description. In this case materials are able to be made in China/India as those to be made by top tier manufacturers.

 

[DekDee]

People have long memories.
There have been some horror stories out of China in the past and that taints peoples perspective.
There are some very good Chinese mills and there are some very poor mills.
Unfortunately my current project is receiving material from a lower standard Chinese mill.
I do not have my database on this laptop but if you do a Google search of Lloyds Register Approved Mills it will show you which Chinese Mills have been audited and approved.
Unfortunately our subcontractors purchasing department were unaware of this

 

[3DDave]

After seeing coverage of ghost cities built in China where people were able to dig through a concrete floor of an apartment with a spoon in a matter of minutes, I'd say the variability of products is too great. Chinese companies can do very good up to excellent work; it's just that far too many of them choose not to and there is no legal or financial penalty for doing poor quality work. Humans are humans all over - the US had to legislate not putting wood dust into bread as a filler and outlawed the addition of metallic mercury and radium to food. China just needs another 50-100 years to catch up with the idea that being more trustworthy is worthwhile. The US still has problems with meat processing plants and baby formula factories, so even the US has some work to do.

If someone said, I'll supply the steel for free, but it might be poorly alloyed or contain random inclusions, would that make the price low enough? I've only worked on projects where the cost of raw materials was dwarfed by the liability if the finished product failed,

 

[EdStainless]

This is a company-by-company issue.
Some companies have a list (short) of mills that are acceptable in 'countries of question'.
Others would require that you provide audits/inspections and production oversight.
We wanted some SS hollows for a special tubing job.
After visiting 7 Chinese mills we had 2 approved suppliers, and we still went and witnessed every run.
This adds significant costs and often makes the product more expensive than buying US or EU material.
For more basic product like plate it is easier to just use blanket restrictions.

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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[Dhurjati Sen]

Just a word of caution

Many material suppliers could easily procure material from China and pass it on as somebody elses, using pdf writers or similar softwares.

MTC reviews are to be supplemented by vendor visit for stage-wise inspection during fabrication, both by TPI and Client. Their frequency of visit might differ.

DHURJATI SEN
Kolkata, India

 

[Krausen]

Working for one of the majors, we currently have many Chinese mills approved. It's all on a case-by-case basis though. Most companies consider this proprietary information. Outright banning all Chinese mills is the "easy button" for some companies.

 

[RVAmeche]

Depends on the project and service. Sometimes contract language will ban Chinese material on critical components of the process, such as high pressure reactors or piping, but allow it on other more mundane aspects of the project.