2021 is a year of full recovery of the global economy. Under the synchronous demands of both domestic and international market, China's economic growth remained stable in the first half of the year. Demands for steel products grew at a high speed and the consumption was robust, mainly due to the prosperous development of downstream industries such as infrastructure construction and industrial manufacturing. Benefiting from this, areas served by PKU Pioneer such as iron & steel, chemical industry, non-ferrous metallurgy and glass making had strong demands for oxygen plants. In the first half of this year, PKU Pioneer's sales turnover has exceeded $108 million, creating the best performance record since our founding.

Since 2021, PKU Pioneer’s VPSA oxygen production business has continued the rapid growth. As of July 2021, with a total oxygen production capacity of approximately 300,000Nm³/h, we've won the bids for 25 VPSA oxygen unit projects, 70% of which are above 5000Nm³/h, including a number of super-large VPSA oxygen equipment projects above 25000Nm³/h. It can be seen that PKU Pioneer has a dominant advantage in the medium and large VPSA oxygen generating plant market, and has been continuing to promote the mature industrial application of ultra-large VPSA oxygen generating systems for many years driven by the market needs.

At the request of Hunan Valin Lianyuan Iron & Steel Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "LY Steel"), PKU Pioneer built the 62,500Nm³/h VPSA oxygen generation unit, the world's largest VPSA oxygen generation system in operation for oxygen-rich blast furnace ironmaking, within just a few months. Shortly after the supercolossal unit was successfully put into operation, PKU Pioneer's technical solution was unanimously approved by the experts of Hengyang Valin Steel Tube Co.,Ltd. and Hunan Valin Xiangtan Iron and Steel Co.,Ltd which are more than 100 kilometers away from LY Steel, which prompted the signing of the supply agreements on 25000/80 VPSA oxygen plants with the two companies respectively to further achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in steel mills. So far, the three major steel mills affiliated to Valin Group have been equipped with VPSA oxygen units set up by PKU Pioneer, with a total oxygen production capacity as high as over 100,000Nm³/h.

In general, the maturity, stability and reliability of applying VPSA oxygen gas plants in blast furnace oxygen-coal injection by steel enterprises tend to be more and more generally recognized in recent years thanks to the continuous optimization of the VPSA oxygen production process, the users’ courage to innovate, and the in-depth explorations by experts and technical teams in this industry to facilitate the better and faster development of the VPSA O2 generation technology.

At the beginning of 2021, PKU Pioneer successively undertook multiple oxygen production projects for non-ferrous metal smelting, among which the 4100/93 project in Golmud City, Qinghai Province is of typical significance. The project lies at a high-altitude site of 2800m with a pressure requirement of 0.7MPa. The oxygen production project requires superior equipment configuration, and it is more difficult to reach the process indexes. With the actual oxygen capacity of 4222Nm³/h and purity of 93.67%, the project was completed in July 2021 and successfully passed the equipment performance test. All the indicators far exceeded the design value.

In addition to the iron & steel making and non-ferrous metallurgy industries, PKU Pioneer has also received several orders from the solid waste treatment industry this year. We've built multiple sets of VPSA oxygen systems used for the recycling of scrap steel, scrap non-ferrous metals and other renewable resources, providing continuous, stable and cost-effective industrial oxygen for different types of smelting furnaces.

At the same time, relying on our unique technical advantages, PKU Pioneer vigorously developed our business in the environmental protection area and formed a strong performance growth point in the ultra-low emission of iron & steel field. In March this year, PKU Pioneer won the bid for the fine desulfurization project of HBIS Group Tangsteel Company (HBIS Tangsteel). This project has two 1500m³ blast furnaces, each with a BFG processing capacity of 400,000Nm³/h and total sulfur content of 200mg/Nm³. After adopting the full dry hydrolysis & desulfurization process developed by PKU Pioneer, the total sulfur content in the desulfurized tail gas is less than 10mg/Nm³ and no secondary pollution was generated. At present, the project is in the engineering design stage, and is expected to officially start construction in September this year. After the project is put into operation, it will further promote the relocation project of HBIS Tangsteel to retreat from the city and speed up the construction of a new generation of green, intelligent and branded steel mills.

Nowadays, 2021 has stepped into the second half of the year as the national economy continues to rehabilitate. PKU Pioneer will strive to take the current momentum and continue to strengthen our own advantages to steadily expand the range of our businesses. We'll hold to the concept of offering high-quality services and keep playing a positive and leading role in the sustainable and stable development of VPSA oxygen generation technology worldwide while achieving promising results.