WSA: steelmaking capacity usage exceeds 73% in September

Global – World crude production climbed 5.6% year on year in September to 141.43 million tonnes as
nearly all the major players recorded higher numbers. The overall increase matched the 5.6% hike in global output across the first three quarters of 2017, with the total of 1.267 billion tonnes comparing to a fraction under 1.2 billion tonnes for last year’€™s January-September period.

Crude steel capacity utilisation for the 66 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (WSA) was 73.5% in September – an increase of 2.8 percentage points over the same month in 2016 and 0.6 percentage points ahead of that for August this year.

The 71.827 million tonnes produced by China in September (+5.3% year on year) took the country’s running total for 2017 to 638.731 million tonnes – equivalent to 6.3% or around 37 million tonnes more than in the opening nine months of 2016.

Japan retained second place in the producer league table despite a 0.2% dip in production over the first three quarters of this year to 78.265 million tonnes.

With an increase of almost 2% in September, India was close behind in third place with a production tally for the year to date of 75.293 million tonnes – a gain of 5.7% over the first nine months of 2016.

The EU-28 and the USA registered respective crude steel production increases of 2.7% and 8.6% in September, resulting in nine-month running totals of, in turn, 126.427 million tonnes (+4.1% year on year) and 61.453 million tonnes (+3.1%).

Gains for this year’s January-September period were also reported to the WSA by, among others: Turkey (+13.5% to 27.742 million tonnes); Russia (+2.8% to 54.203 million tonnes); South America (+8% to 32.339 million tonnes); Africa (+13.8% to 9.894 million tonnes); and the Middle East (+14.2% to 24.504 million tonnes).