On September 21, the 21st China International Industry Fair (CIIF) with the theme of "Intelligence and Internet – Impetuses to Empower Industries the New Development" was successfully concluded. TISCO’s "hand tearable steel" won an award in the fair.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China and the 21st year of the CIIF. Since its establishment in 1999, CIIF has developed into the most influential international industrial brand exhibition in China's machinery manufacturing industry with UFI certification. It is the only exhibition with award function approved by the State Council. This year, the award appraisal office of CIIF carried out reform and innovative optimization in terms of appraisal mode and award setting, revised the award management method, re-named the award to "China International Industry Fair Award" and stipulated that the number of awards per year should be up to 10 (including 10). An "application + recommendation" system is applied for participation of the award appraisal this year to strengthen the cooperation with domestic and foreign associations and exhibitor. An "Awards Committee of Experts" is established to adopt strict control to all aspects of the awards appraisal and to enhance the authority and influence of the assessment work.

All the 10 winners of the 21st CIIF Awards are those who have made significant progress or breakthroughs in their products or technologies in industrial fields, involving concepts such as "world first", "international initiative" and "reaching the world's advanced level". TISCO’s wide ultra-thin precision stainless steel strip, widely well known as "hand tearable steel", used to be produced by only a handful of countries in the world for a long time due to extremely high requirements for its thickness, precision, plate type, surface and performance in high-end application fields, complicated process technology and great difficulty in production control. In 2016, TISCO’s subsidiary, Shanxi Taigang Stainless Steel Precision Strip Company set up a joint research and development team. The team finally successfully produced "hand tearable steel" with a thickness of 0.02 mm and a width of 600 mm after conducting more than 700 tests, overcoming more than 170 equipment problems and more than 450 process problems, and achieving a series of major breakthroughs in key processes and production and manufacturing technologies. The physical quality of the product has reached the international leading level and TISCO has become the only enterprise in the world that makes it into batch production. The successful of "hand tearable steel" has strongly promoted the upgrading and sustainable development of key materials in the manufacturing field of high-end industries, driven the development of a series of major surface deep processing technologies such as superconductivity and micromachining, and led the development direction of ultra-thin stainless steel strip in the world. The project owned 44 authorized patents, drafted and published 2 industry standards, and won the only special award of 2019 Metallurgical Science and Technology Award set by the China Iron and Steel Industry Association and China Metal Society.

It is reported that the 21st CIIF Awards accepted totally 319 applications for awards. After preliminary examination by exhibitor invitation departments, 310 exhibits were selected for expert evaluations. And then, 10 CIIF Award winners were selected after defense evaluation, expert committee evaluation, and even an online poll of nearly 20,000 people from the media, young netizens and the public.