For April, scrap utilization in per tonne of steelmaking among China’s 211 steel mills under Mysteel’s regular survey inched up for the third straight month by another 0.51 percentage point to 23.71% on average, with the samples including both integrated and electric-arc-furnace (EAF) plants and those with both blast furnace (BF) and EAF facilities.
Accordingly, the total steel scrap consumption of these 211 surveyed mills increased by 115,200 tonnes on month to 2.89 million tonnes by the end of April, Mysteel’s survey showed.
The scrap use in China’s crude steel output increased marginally, mainly due to the slight incline in usage among domestic integrated mills last month, the survey results indicated.
Among the total, scrap utilization in crude steel output among the 130 mills with only BFs averaged 15.98%, or equivalent to about 1.51 million tonnes of steel scrap, which was 59,900 tonnes more than in March.
However, the 57 EAF mills showed a different trend last month, with their scrap usage in crude steel output assessed at 93.19%, or lower by 2.39 percentage points on month, as some EAF mills had been forced to rein in output last month with limited scrap availability at hand, according to the survey.
In April, the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in many regions of China had significantly disrupted scrap collecting and processing activities. Moreover, due to transport hold-ups amid some local government measures to control the virus spread, scrap deliveries from traders to mills had also been refrained, Mysteel Global noted.
Consequently, these 211 sampled mills held 4.5 million tonnes of steel scrap in their inventories, or lower by 252,700 tonnes on month. Among the total, East China, which is one of the most-affected areas by the coronavirus, posted the largest on-month decline of 240,800 tonnes in stocks among 55 local mills, Mysteel’s data showed.
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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