Steel production maintains strong pace in February

Global – Crude steel production for the 67 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (WSA) amounted 126.579 million tonnes in February for a year-on-year gain of 4.1%. Capacity utilisation for the month climbed to 70.3% from 69.2% in January and 66.3% in February 2016.

Among the major producers, the biggest year-on-year gains for February were reported by Turkey (+15.6% to 2.739 million tonnes), India (+8.9% to 8.113 million tonnes), South Korea (+8.3% to 5.508 million tonnes), Brazil (+5.7% to 2.572 million tonnes) and China (+4.6% to an estimated 61.187 million tonnes).

After two months of 2017, global crude steel output was running 5.8% or almost 15 million tonnes ahead of the same period last year at 264.416 million tonnes, with Turkey again leading the way with an increase of 14.1% to 5.669 million tonnes.

India’s output was 12.1% higher than in January-February 2016 at 16.762 million tonnes, China hiked its production by 5.8% to 128.767 million tonnes, while Russia upped its total by 5.6% to 11.768 million tonnes. Also across this year’s January-February period, there were more conservative crude steel production increases for the EU-28 (+1.6% to 27.295 million tonnes) and the USA (+3.5% to 13.337 million tonnes).

Production boosts were also registered by South America (+5.4% to 6.695 million tonnes), the Middle East (+9.7% to 4.919 million tonnes) and Africa (+14.5% to 2.211 million tonnes).