International Stainless Steel Forum (ISSF) has recently released world’s stainless steel production for the first three months of 2019. It can be seen that stainless steel melt shop production during Q1 (Jan-Mar) 2019 has decreased by 2.5% year-on-year to 12.5 MnT.
However, the same has increased by 5.4% against the previous Sep-Dec’18 quarter of 2018.
The growth of stainless steel smelting in Q1 2019 compared with the Q1 2018 was noted only in the “other countries” group, to which the ISSF refers to Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. In these countries, in the first three months of 2019, 1.467 MnT of metal was received, an increase of 2% over the same period a year earlier.
In other regions, there was a decline. In particular, in China, stainless steel production in Q1 2019 decreased by 1.5% compared to the first quarter of 2018 to 6.43 MnT, and in Asian countries without China, Korea, and Indonesia – by 5.7% to 1.96 MnT. In case of Europe, the volume of stainless steel production amounted to 1.90 MnT, also by 5.7% less than in the first quarter of last year, while in case of U.S. the same fell by 2.0% to 704 thousand tonnes.
The International Stainless Steel Forum (ISSF) that was founded in 1996 is a non-profit research organization based in Brussels which represents the interests of the international stainless steel industry towards the general public, consumers, the media and regulatory authorities.
Global Stainless Steel Quarterly Output
| Region | Q1 2018 | Q4 2018 | Q1 2019 | Q-o-Q | Y-o-Y |
| Europe | 2,014 | 1,748 | 1,899 | 9% | -6% |
| U.S. | 718 | 624 | 704 | 13% | -2% |
| China | 6,533 | 6,161 | 6,434 | 4% | -2% |
| Asia (without China & S.Korea) | 2,079 | 1,983 | 1,961 | -1% | -6% |
| Others | 1,439 | 1,311 | 1,467 | 12% | 2% |
| Total | 12,783 | 11,827 | 12,464 | 5% | -3% |
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