Steel output gains more than 5% in November

Global – Compared to the same month last year, crude steel production in the 62 countries reporting their figures to the World Steel Association (WSA) jumped 5.1% to around 122 million tonnes in November – helped in no small measure by a 13.7% increase in China to 57.5 million tonnes.

Also recording a significant year-on-year gain was Turkey in lifting its output by 4.6% to around 3 million tonnes in the penultimate month of 2012 while the total for Brazil also climbed – by 2.4% to 2.8 million tonnes.

By contrast, the USA produced 6.7 million tonnes of crude steel in November 2012 for a year-on-year decline of 4.8%. Output in Japan and South Korea was also lower – the former by 2.3% to 8.5 million tonnes and the latter by 2.7% to 5.6 million tonnes.

In the EU, German production of 3.4 million tonnes represented a slight decrease of 0.2% over November 2011. Russia’€™s output dipped 0.7% to 5.5 million tonnes while the Ukraine’€™s slumped almost 8% to 2.7 million tonnes when making the same comparison.

The crude steel capacity utilisation rate for the 62 countries reporting to the WSA declined to 76.1% in November this year from 76.5% in October. However, the figure exceeded that for November 2011 by 1.6 percentage points.