Crude steel capacity utilisation hits 73% in October

Global – World crude steel output was almost 6% higher in October than in the same month last year, with Japan the only leading producer to record a lower total than 12 months earlier (-1% to 8.971 million tonnes). Production in China, meanwhile, leapt 6.1% year on year to 72.362 million tonnes.

Output across all 66 nations reporting to the World Steel Association jumped 5.9% from 137.214 million tonnes in October 2016 to 145.254 million tonnes in the corresponding month of 2017.

Capacity utilisation improved from 70% to 73% when comparing the same two months. Global crude steel output progressed 5.6% from 1.335 billion tonnes in the opening 10 months of 2016 to 1.411 billion tonnes in the same period of 2017.

Chinese production was 6.1% – or around 41 million tonnes higher – at 709.5 million tonnes, with Japan in second place (-0.2% to 87.239 million tonnes) and India not too far behind in third spot (+6.4% to 84.123 million tonnes).

Next on the list were the USA (+3.9% to 68.364 million tonnes) and Russia (+3% to 60.428 million tonnes).

In regional terms, the EU-28 upped its output by 3.7% in January-October 2017 to 140.765 million tonnes but this hike was eclipsed by those for South America (+7.4% to 36.206 million tonnes), the Middle East (+13.3% to 27.166 million tonnes) and Africa (+14.3% to 11.083 million tonnes).

The increase for Oceania was 1.4% to 4.879 million tonnes.