Blast furnace capacity utilization among China’s 247 steel mills under Mysteel’s weekly survey ended its three-week slips, up 0.83 percentage point on week to 92.47% over November 20-26, mainly as steel mills had ramped up the output moderately on higher margins, market sources commented.
Over the latest survey period, these mills’ daily molten iron output also recovered by 22,100 tonne/day on week to 2.46 million t/d, though the operational rate of blast furnaces at the 247 surveyed mills nudged down by 0.13 percentage point on week to 86.33% as of November 26.
“Short-term restrictions on some steel mills in North China had been lifted since November 19, enabling local steel mills to raise output a bit,” a Shanghai-based market watcher commented.
The higher output was more in response to higher steel prices and thus higher margins, ignoring the signs of softening in steel demand with dropping temperatures in North China and continuing rainfalls in East China, market sources noted.
As of November 26, China’s price of HRB400 20mm dia rebar hovered high at Yuan 4,107/tonne ($622.2/t) including the 13% VAT despite recent declines, Mysteel’s data shows.
Over November 19-25, production of the five major steel items comprising rebar, wire rod, hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil and medium plate among 184 Chinese mills, thus, remained largely stable at 10.75 million tonnes, or down merely 0.1% on week.
The 247 steel mills had been stocking up imported iron ore, with the inventories of all forms including all the volumes at the plant, port stockyards, and on the water, thus, rose for the second week by 1.9 million tonnes on week to 114.4 million tonnes as of November 26, or being sufficient for 37.56 days at the present daily consumption rate, which was 0.27 day longer on week, according to Mysteel’s data.
Over November 20-26, Mysteel’s smaller-scale study among the 163 blast-furnace steel plants across China also showed a small 0.89 percentage point on-week incline in their capacity utilization to 78.31%.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
Photo: World Steel Association
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