Over December 3-9, the blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among China’s 247 steel mills under Mysteel’s survey still hovered at the lowest since March 2018, or down for the eighth straight week by another 0.67 percentage point to 74.12%, as steel producers, especially those in North China, had maintained low output amid the series of restrictive measures, long term and temporary, as well as tepid steel demand in winter.
During the latest survey period, daily molten iron output among the 247 surveyed steel mills, thus, eased by 18,100 tonne/day on week to 1.99 million t/d in total, and their BF operational rate also declined by 1.66 percentage points on week to 68.14%, or 16.63 percentage points lower on year.
“The ongoing winter restrictions in many parts of North China have continued to constrain operations among the local mills,” a Shanghai-based market watcher said.
Other than the winter restriction, Tangshan of North China’s Hebei has executed another round of emergency curtailing measures amid poor air quality since December 3, and some steelmakers in Xingtai, also in Hebei, have been ordered to either hot idle their BFs or lower the capacity utilization since December 9, Mysteel Global noted.
The ever-declining steel output had prompted these mills to further trim their imported iron ore inventories, as the total volume including all forms and the tonnage at their steelworks, port stockyards and on the water, edged down for the fifth straight week by another 821,400 tonnes to 103.1 million tonnes, which could last for 41.87 days, or 0.26 day longer on week, as their daily consumption for imported ores had decreased by 35,100 t/d on week to 2.46 million t/d in total.
Over the same survey period, Mysteel’s smaller-scale survey among 163 Chinese steel plants showed that their BF capacity use ebbed for the third week by another 0.2 percentage point to 57.26% as of December 9.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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