World crude steel output surges 6.3% in August

Global – In August, crude steel capacity utilisation across the 67 countries reporting their data to the World Steel Association (WSA) was 72.2% – an increase of 3.3 percentage points over the same month last year but a decline of 0.2 percentage points when compared to July 2017.

The overall output figure of 143.58 million tonnes represented a 6.3% gain over the 135.117 million tonnes of August 2016 while the year-to-date total of 1.122 billion tonnes was 4.9% higher than the 1.069 billion tonnes of January-August 2016.

Chinese crude steel production soared more than 30 million tonnes, or 5.6%, in the opening eight months of this year to 566.405 million tonnes.

Japan held on to second spot in the world producers’ league table despite its output dropping 0.4% to 69.644 million tonnes. India was in third place as a 5.1% year-on-year increase in production yielded a total of 66.459 million tonnes.

There was a 2.4% upturn in US crude steel production to 54.703 million tonnes in this year’s January-August period while South Korea (+3.7% to 47.012 million tonnes) and Turkey (+ 13.6% to 24.742 million tonnes) recorded even more substantial gains.

On the flipside, output in Russia fell 1% to 46.525 million tonnes and Ukraine suffered a 13.9% slump to 14.114 million tonnes.

From the regional perspective, EU crude steel production was 4.3% higher in the first eight months of this year at 112.701 million tonnes. There were also strong gains for South America (+8.1% to 28.601 million tonnes), Africa (+11.4% to 8.931 million tonnes), the Middle East (+9.5% to 20.79 million tonnes) and Oceania (+3.6% to 3.909 million tonnes).