Utilization of domain capacity in China increases for the third week in a row

Domestic steel prices rose in the country, and steel mills were able to make certain profits

On September 13-19, China’s blast furnace capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steelmakers was 84.06%, up 0.17 percentage points from the previous week. This is evidenced by Mysteel data.

Growth has been observed for the third week in a row as domestic prices rose, and more plants were able to make a profit from selling steel products.

Daily pig iron production on September 13-19 increased by 0.2% week-on-week to 2.24 million tons per day.

Consumption of imported iron ore at 247 steel mills also increased by 0.5% week-on-week, reaching 2.77 million tons per day.

Last week, Chinese steelmakers’ stocks of raw materials declined as they were unable to make large purchases of ore during the Mid-Autumn Festival (September 15-17). Most traders stopped selling at this time.

As of September 19, the total stocks of imported iron ore stored at 247 steel mills fell by 0.6% y-o-y to 90.3 million tons. This is enough for 32.6 days at the current level of utilization.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in January-August 2024, China’s steelmakers reduced steel production by 3.3% compared to the same period in 2023, to 691 million tons. In August, steel production in the country fell by 6.1% compared to July – to 77.92 million tons, which was caused by lower demand and a reduction in the margins of metallurgists. At the same time, this figure was down 10.4% year-on-year.