Smart Manufacturing Breakthrough: Jingye Group Achieves Stable Mass Production of Hot-Dip Galvanized Heavy-Gauge High-Strength IF Steel

Recently, Jingye Group achieved a key technological breakthrough in the field of cold-rolled hot-dip galvanized high-end steel sheets, successfully realizing stable mass production of hot-dip galvanized heavy-gauge high-strength IF (Interstitial-Free) steel. This achievement breaks through the current industry bottleneck faced by private domestic steel enterprises – namely, inconsistent quality and unreliable supply continuity in mass production – and further strengthens the Group’s self-developed smart manufacturing capabilities for high-end sheets.

Jun 23,2026

As China’s high-end manufacturing sector accelerates its transformation and upgrading, the market has placed higher demands on steel in terms of strength, formability, corrosion resistance, and dimensional precision. As a core material for advanced stamping applications, hot-dip galvanized heavy-gauge high-strength IF steel offers extremely low interstitial impurities, a low yield ratio, exceptional deep-drawing performance, and strong zinc adhesion. It is widely regarded as a benchmark product that demonstrates a steelmaker’s smart manufacturing prowess in high-end sheet production.

For a long time, the production of heavy-gauge high-strength IF steel with hot-dip galvanized coating has faced common industry challenges: it is extremely difficult to balance surface quality and mechanical properties. During production, issues such as uneven microstructure, significant fluctuations in properties, visible zinc flow marks on the surface, and coating peeling often arise, making it hard to meet the batch procurement quality requirements of high-end customers. To tackle these pain points and bridge the capacity gap in high-end sheets, the technical team of Jingye High-quality Steel focused on four core indicators – heavy gauge, high strength, high formability, and high surface quality. Leveraging the Group’s full-process intelligent production system, they carried out dedicated R&D efforts in material optimization, rolling processes, hot-dip galvanizing technology, and quality control, systematically overcoming the technical hurdles for industrialization.

In terms of material optimization, the technical team used an intelligent smelting system to precisely adjust alloy compositions, balancing strength and deep-drawing performance. For the rolling process, they optimized full-process rolling parameters to improve sheet shape and flatness. While most peer enterprises in the industry concentrate on thin-gauge products (below 1.5 mm) for hot-dip galvanized high-strength IF steel, Jingye Group has broken through process limitations and achieved stable batch production of heavy-gauge products in the 1.5–2.0 mm range, significantly expanding the thickness coverage of high-strength IF steel. In the galvanizing stage, an AI-controlled air knife system was deployed, along with optimized degreasing processes to enhance coating quality, effectively eliminating surface zinc flow marks on products thicker than 1.5 mm – bringing surface quality to an industry-leading level. For quality control, a full-chain management mechanism was implemented, resulting in a standardized smart mass-production protocol that resolves the long-standing issue of unstable batch quality.

At present, all performance indicators of the product meet national standards, and the product can flexibly accommodate the customized requirements of various high-end customers, earning wide recognition from clients. Going forward, Jingye Group will continue to deepen its smart manufacturing capabilities in high-end cold-rolled specialty steels, further optimize its product mix and expand specifications, drive industrial upgrading through technological innovation, provide superior products to customers, and offer solid core material support for the development of China’s high-end manufacturing industry.