Times used to be good for China's steel traders. The country's economy was booming.

New skyscrapers and real estate developments were going up across the country, not to mention all of the infrastructure projects. And it all needed steel. Standing between the foundries and the construction contractors was a great place to be.

"From 2004 to 2010, China's steel industry was particularly prosperous," said Ye Minghai, deputy general manager of Shanghai Shuangsheng Steel Trade Co. "Almost every steel trader I know could make a lot of money in those years."

But ever since the economy began to slow in 2011, China's steel traders have been hit hard as the real estate market went into a slump, dragging down steel prices. And it's only gotten worse this year.

Unable to deal with the nearly continuous drop in steel prices, many trading companies have gone under. Since 2012, the number of steel traders in China has fallen by almost half, according to a report by the China Business News on January 19.

It's even worse in Shanghai, one of the largest centers in China in terms of annual steel trading volume, where nearly 70 percent of steel traders have left the industry, the report said.

According to a report by the China Iron and Steel Association Friday, the revenue of China's major steel enterprises fell more than 16 percent year-on-year in the first five months of 2015.

Ye told a story about a steel trader who refused to be named from Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. The man had come to ?Shanghai around 2005 to trade steel and had become immensely successful by the following year.

"He told me he made a profit of about 20 million yuan ($3.22 million) in 2006," Ye told the Global Times Wednesday. "By the end of 2007, he had managed to buy two villas in the city."

The steel trading market in ?Shanghai was in a frenzy in those years. The Dabaishu area in the metropolis' Yangpu district was a center for steel enterprises.

A security guard who refused to be named at Xinhai ?Commercial Building, one of the steel trading markets in the Dabaishu area, told the Global Times Tuesday that the area was bustling with steel traders from outside Shanghai in 2008.

"There used to be about five steel trading markets in this area, and if a steel trader wanted to rent an office in one of those markets five years ago, he probably had to wait for at least one year," the guard said.

In 2012, however, as the economy slowed and steel demand shrank, many domestic steel traders started cutting prices. That led to a vicious cycle in the steel market, causing prices to collapse. The price of hot rolled steel bars, a type of commonly used steel, fell from about 3,721 yuan per ton in December 2008 to around 1,900 yuan per ton in July 2015.

A marketing manager ?surnamed Zhang, who declined to give his full name, told the Global Times Tuesday that the situation is even worse in 2015 than it was in 2014.

Zhang works for Shanghai Zhouning Industry Co, a steel trading company located in the Xinhai building.

"The price of hot rolled steel bar is about 1,900 yuan per ton currently, even lower than the price of cabbage," Zhang said, shrugging. "My company can't make a profit now."

Wu Min is the manager of Shanghai Yaxian Industrial Co, a steel trading company at Songjiang Steel Market, another large steel trading market located in the southwest area of Shanghai.

Wu told the Global Times Wednesday that the shrinking real estate market is the major reason for the collapse in steel prices.

"Some sectors, like transportation, infrastructure, also need steel, but the demand for steel in those sectors is much less than in the real estate industry. When the real estate industry slumped in China, its impact on steel trading was almost fatal," Wu said.

With demand growing weaker, many steel companies have failed.

Zhang comes from Zhouning, a county in East China's Fujian Province.

He said that there used to be around 20,000 people in his hometown working in the steel trading industry; now there are less than 4,000.

"I don't know when my company will collapse," Zhang said. "Probably very soon."

The security guard at the Xinhai building said that several nearby trading markets had closed down, and the ?number of steel companies in the Xinhai building has dwindled in recent years.

The scene was bleak at the Songjiang Steel Market Wednesday afternoon. Many of the steel trading enterprises were closed. At the few dozen steel trading companies that remained opened, the employees were mostly sleeping or chatting.

"We are all trying to get through the hard times," Wu said.

Financing troubles

Wu said that opportunities remain, but he doesn't have enough cash to do much business.

Usually, a steel trader serves as an intermediary between steel producers and customers, such as home builders. The traders pay steel producers for their products and then sell those products on to their customers sometime later.

This works just fine as long as the traders have access to credit and their customers pay them in a timely manner.

"Usually we need to borrow money from banks to pay the steel factories. When the industry was prosperous and the customers could repay us in due time, we had no problems with capital turnover, and the banks were eager to lend money to us," Wu said. "However, when the market went bad, many customers owed us money, which in turn made it hard for us to repay the banks."

Banks have since lost confidence in steel traders, Wu noted. They are no longer willing to lend to steel traders, even though the debt problem has improved over the past two years, according to Wu.

"In the past we accept payment delays; now we don't. Therefore, the business in fact has become safer nowadays, but the banks still don't trust us and wouldn't lend us any money," Wu noted.

A Shenzhen-based bank employee who refused to be named told the Global Times Monday that her bank still grants loans to old steel trading clients who have a good reputation for being able to repay their debts.

"But generally we don't accept new clients in the industry," she said.

A way out

Many steel traders have turned to ?other professions. Xu Yongbo, a steel industry analyst, said that he has seen a handful of steel traders leave the industry over the last few months.

It is not easy to step into a new ?profession, particularly when China's economy is struggling, Xu told the Global Times Wednesday

Still, Ye from the Shuangsheng steel trade company said that steel traders shouldn't be too pessimistic.

"As many enterprises have closed, the steel industry has become less competitive, and the government has provided many opportunities for the industry this year, like the 'One Belt, One Road' initiative," Ye said.

Zhang from Zhouning steel trade company also said he hoped things would turn around for steel traders.

"Although the industry seems to be hopeless, I still have to persist. I have been in the industry for more than 20 years; I don't want to quit now," Zhang noted.