Over February 18-24, the blast furnace capacity utilization rate among China’s 247 steel mills under Mysteel’s survey showed signs of recovery after two weeks of dips, recovering by 2.17 percentage points on week to 77.61% as of February 23, as some steel mills in North China have gradually resumed their operations after the production restrictions eased with the end of Winter Olympic Games staged in and around Beijing on February 20.
Consequently, these 247 steelmakers produced 2.09 million tonnes/day of molten iron in total on average, also up 58,500 t/d on week, and their BF operational rate increased accordingly, up for the second week by another 3.85 percentage points on week to 73.44%.
The relaxation of the production curbs imposed on steel mills in northern China has given a fillip to the market sentiment, encouraging more mills to resume production, Mysteel Global noted.
In tandem, a total of 30 BFs had been brought back on stream during the latest survey period, according to a Shanghai-based market watcher.
Also, over February 18-24, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 surveyed steel mills edged up accordingly by 97,200 t/d on week to 2.58 million t/d on average, Mysteel’s data showed.
By February 24, total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms including the volumes at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water held by these 247 mills increased by 542,600 tonnes on week to 111.2 million tonnes. The tonnage was sufficient to last the surveyed mills for 43.08 days of use, or 1.47 days shorter than during Mysteel’s previous survey period.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an exchange agreement between MySteel Global and SteelMint.
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