The blast furnace capacity utilization rate among the 247 blast furnace steelmakers across China under Mysteel’s weekly survey reversed down 0.24 percentage point on week to 79.41% as of January 9, with another round of restriction on steel mills in North and East China over January 2-7, according to Mysteel’s latest weekly survey released on January 10.
The local authorities in North China’s Hebei province and Shandong in East China imposed another round of curbing on a small scale of local steel mills on January 2 because of their poor air quality forecasts, which ended January 6 and January 7 respectively, and the total daily molten iron output among the surveyed steelmakers, accordingly, reversed down by 6,700 tonnes/day on week to an average of 2.22 million t/d over January 3-9, according to the survey.
The operational rate of the blast furnaces at the 247 surveyed steel mills nationwide, thus, reversed down by 0.82 percentage point on week to 77.58%.
In the near term, the blast furnace capacity utilization among the surveyed mills may hover at the present level as Shandong has just imposed another round of restrictions on steel mills in some parts of the province because of the poor air quality, as Mysteel Global reported.
Mysteel’s survey among a smaller sample of 163 steel plants across China showed that their blast furnace capacity utilization rate was largely stable at 76.49% as of Thursday, or down merely 0.11 percentage point on week, according to Mysteel’s latest survey.
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