The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel’s monitoring grew for the 11th successive week to 89.28% over March 17-23, mainly as steel mills had been maintaining normal production on their remaining steel margins.
Over the survey period, these 247 steel mills saw their BF capacity utilization rate gain another 0.83 percentage point on week, and their daily hot metal output, accordingly, edged up by 22,400 tonnes/day on week to 2.4 million t/d in total, while the operational rate of their BFs inclined more modestly by 0.44 percentage point on week to 82.73%.
“Though market sentiment has been under downward pressure due to the recent intensified macro-economic instability, Chinese steelmakers can still enjoy profitable margins, which gave them confidence in keeping production,” a Shanghai-based market watcher explained.
In tandem, Mysteel’s survey showed that 58.87% of the 247 sampled steel mills managed to enjoy some healthy margins by Thursday, up by another 1.29 percentage points on week to hit a new high since late August 2022.
Higher steel output saw the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 sampled mills continue to rise too, which went up for the third straight week by 29,900 t/d on week to 2.92 million t/d on average over March 17-27, according to Mysteel’s other survey.
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 518,300 tonnes on week to 91.5 million tonnes, Mysteel’s data showed.
Apart from steelmakers’ higher daily consumption of iron ore, their cautious buying amid dampened market sentiment also contributed to the drop in ore inventories at mills.
The total tonnage would be sufficient for 31.34 days of use, or 0.5 day shorter than the previous survey period, according to Mysteel’s assessment.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Alyssa Ren, rentingting@mysteel.com
Note: This article has been written in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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