The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steel mills increased to 87.56% over September 2-8, or having been up for the sixth straight week by another 0.73 percentage point on week, with the contribution mainly from steel producers in North, East and Northeast China, according to Mysteel’s latest survey.
During the survey period, these 247 steel mills’ daily hot metal output edged up accordingly by 19,500 tonnes/day on week to 2.36 million t/d in total, and their BF operational rate also increased by 1.13 percentage points on week to 81.99% as of September 8.
Some BFs across the country had been brought back on stream during the period after the completion of the scheduled maintenance, with a total of 12 blast furnaces having been restarted, a Shanghai-based market analyst shared her observation.
Meanwhile, the improvement in spot steel sales due to end-users’ replenishment for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival holiday over September 10-12 also encouraged some mills to maintain their normal production, Mysteel Global noted.
In tandem, Mysteel’s other survey showed that over September 2-8, the daily trading volume of construction steel including rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among 237 Chinese trading houses averaged 173,651 t/d, 21.6% higher from the prior week.
Accordingly, over September 2-8, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among 247 surveyed mills increased by 41,200 t/d on week to 2.87 million t/d on average.
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 decreased by 259,000 tonnes on week to 91.1 million tonnes.
Apart from steelmakers’ higher daily consumption of iron ore, their remaining cautious buying amid unimproved market sentiment also contributed to the drop in mills’ ore inventories.
The total tonnage would be sufficient for 33.81 days of their use, or 0.58 day shorter than the previous survey period, according to Mysteel’s assessment.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Zhenqi Yang, yangzhenqi@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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