Baogang Group provided a total of 97,200 tons of high-speed rail - 70 percent of the total - for the Xi'an-Yinchuan High-speed Railway (HSR) that began trial operations in early November, according to local media reports.

The Xi'an-Yinchuan HSR is an important part of the "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed railway lines that make up the national medium and long-term railway network plan. It is the first ballasted HSR to be built on the longest section of the loess layer in China.

Baogang Group, based in Baotou, North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is one of the oldest iron and steel manufacturers in China and has a major plant located in Baotou. It is also the country's biggest scientific research and production center for rare earth metals.

According to officials at the Baogang Group, HSRs have quite high requirements in terms of their technological parameters, demanding precise straightness in the geometric dimensions of the rails.

The rails produced by Baogang Group are all high-speed rails, and can facilitate speeds of 200-250 kilometers per hour.

Over a period of three years, starting in 2018, the rails were shipped and installed in three batches.

Among them, 95 percent were laid on the main HSR line and 5 percent were laid on the auxiliary line.