France increased steel production by 7.1% m/m in September

In September 2023, steel enterprises of France increased steel production by 7.1% compared to the same month in 2022 – to 857 thousand tons. This is evidenced by WorldSteel Association’s data.

On an annual basis, steel production in France increased by 1.3% as of September 2023.

In January-September 2023, French steelmakers produced 7.32 million tons of steel, which is 23.5% less than in the same period last year.

The average monthly production of steel in France, in January-September, amounted to 813.2 thousand tons, while for the same period in 2022, the indicator was at the level of 1.06 million tons (-23.49% y/y).

In 2022 France reduced steel production by 26% compared to 2021 – up to 12.12 million tons. Thus, the country took 16th place in the global ranking of WorldSteel steel producers.

In general, steel production in the countries of the European Union in September 2023 fell by 1.1% compared to September last year – to 10.6 million tons. In January-September 2023, 96.2 million tons of steel were produced in the EU, which is 9 .1% less y/y.

Low indicators of steel production in January-September 2023 are connected with the weak state of the market, which has been observed since the fall of 2022. The European steel industry is facing high production costs, at a time when demand for domestic steel products is weak amid filling the market with cheaper imported products. Currently, many companies have limited their capacity to balance supply and demand and stabilize product prices.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in 2022 European steelmakers reduced steel production by 10.5% compared to 2021 – to 136.7 million tons. In general, global steel output last year fell by 4.3% y/y – to 1.831 billion tons.