Over September 17-23, blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among China’s 247 steel mills under Mysteel’s survey fell to a new low since July 2, reaching 82.06% after the third-week decline and at a faster pace of 1.68 percentage points on week, as more steel mills across the country have further reined in output on the request of the local authorities or power rationing.
The BF capacity utilization rate was 11.63 percentage points lower on year too, indicating that the country has been making progress in bringing down steel output on year, Mysteel Global noted.
During the latest survey period, these 247 mills’ daily molten iron output fell too by 44,800 tonnes/day on week to 2.18 million t/d in total, and the operational rate of their blast furnaces decreased by another 1.95 percentage points on week to 69.92% as of September 23, both down for the third week too and hitting a new low since early July, according to Mysteel’s data.
“The decline in molten iron output was still mainly from East China’s Jiangsu, as more local steel mills have trimmed their output further (both in crude and finished steel) as part of Beijing’s efforts to reduce energy consumption and intensity among power-intensive industrial companies,” a Shanased maghai-brket watcher commented.
Besides, some steel mills in North, Northwest and South China answered to the local authorities’ commands, having idled more blast furnaces to cut their production, according to her.
Ever-declining output and wide-range steel output restrictive measures inside the country, thus, have prompted many Chinese steel mills to maintain their in-house iron ore stocks at a rationally low level, according to the market sources.
Mysteel’s survey among these mills showed that their inventories of imported iron ore in all forms including the volumes at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water, fell to the lowest since February 2020, or down for the ninth week by another 770,400 tonnes on week to 102.7 million tonnes.
These iron ore stocks will be sufficient for around 38.43 days of consumption, or 0.57 day longer on week, mainly as their daily consumption of imported iron ore decreased by 60,900 t/d on week to 2.67 million t/d in total together with lower steel output, Mysteel’s data showed.
Over the same survey period, Mysteel’s smaller-scale study on China’s 163 steel plants showed that their blast furnace capacity utilization rate edged down for the fourth week by 1.85 percentage points on week to 65.71% as of September 23, or the lowest since early July.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
Leave a Reply