The blast furnace capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel’s regular survey had inched up for the second straight week over August 5-11, rising by another 1.62 percentage points on week to 81.22%, as more mills continued to resume operations or ramp up production with the improvement in their profit margins.
Over the latest survey period, the 247 mills produced 2.19 million tonnes/day of hot metal on average, up 43,600 t/d on week, while the operational rate of their blast furnaces also edged up by 3.54 percentage points on week to 76.24% as of August 11.
The improved performance of BF makers was due to the fact that some of them had beefed up production, as their profit margins improved with the decrease in production costs, a survey compiler observed.
For example, Mysteel’s survey showed that 54.55% of the 247 mills had managed to enjoy some healthy margins by Thursday, with the profitability rate increasing for the third consecutive week by another 12.56 percentage points on week to 54.55.
Accordingly, over August 5-11, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among these surveyed mills increased by 36,900 t/d on week to average 2.65 million t/d in total.
As of Thursday, inventories of imported iron ore in all forms at these mills including ore sitting at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water grew by 1.3 million tonnes on week to 99.2 million tonnes, as some of them replenished some quantities for near-term production, though the volume was not large.
The tonnage will be sufficient for around 37.38 days of their use, or 0.03 day shorter than the previous survey period, Mysteel Global noted.
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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