France reduced steel production by 8.1% m/m in October

In October 2023, French steel enterprises reduced steel production by 8.1% compared to the same month in 2022 – to 788 thousand tons. This is evidenced by WorldSteel Association’s data.

Steel production in France fell by 19.3% y/y in October 2023.

In January-October 2023, French steelmakers produced 8.11 million tons of steel, down 23.1% year-on-year.

The average monthly steel production in France for the first 10 months amounted to 810.7 thousand tons, while in the same period of 2022 the figure was 1.05 million tons (-23.11% y/y).

In 2022, France reduced steel production by 26% compared to 2021 – to 12.12 million tons. Thus, the country ranked 16th in the global steel producer ranking by WorldSteel.

In general, steel production in the EU countries in October 2023 fell by 7.1% compared to October last year – to 10.6 million tons. In January-October this year, the EU produced 106.8 million tons of steel, down 8.8% y/y.

The low steel production in January-October 2023 is due to the weak market conditions that have 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 a flood of cheaper imported products. Many companies have now 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.