Posted on 09 Nov 2020
The blast furnace capacity utilization among China’s 247 steel mills headed downward after a one-week recovery, easing to 92.27% as of November 5, but this was still at the plateau since Mysteel updated the survey samples in January 2019, indicating that most of the steel producers had maintained high production on profitmaking at present.
The utilization rate was down 0.2 percentage point on week but was still 9.02 percentage points higher on year and their daily molten iron output reversed down too by 5,400 tonne/day on week to 2.46 million t/d in total over October 30-November 5. The operational rate of their blast furnaces decreased by 1.04 percentage points on week to 86.46%.
The firmness in the domestic steel prices and the remaining robust spot sales despite in November, a lower consumption season in China with the winter coming to North China, had boosted the market confidence and supported the positive sentiment among the Chinse steel producers, Mysteel Global noted.
The spot trading volume of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 traders across China, for example, averaged 249,067 t/d over October 30-November 5, or up for the third week by another 1.5% on week, Mysteel’s data shows.
Besides, China's national price of the HRB 400 20mm dia rebar, a bellwether of the domestic steel market sentiment, increased by Yuan 75/tonne ($11/t) on week to reach its year’s highest of Yuan 3,935/t including the 13% VAT as of November 5.
Higher sales saw stocks of the five major finished steel products at the traders in China’s 132 cities fell for the fourth straight week by another 1.2 million tonnes or 5.9% on week to 18.3 million tonnes as of November 5, according to Mysteel’s latest release.
On the remaining high steel output, the Chinese blast-furnace steel mills had increased their iron ore procurement volume, Mysteel Global noted.
By November 5, inventories of imported iron ore at the 247 Chinese steelmakers including all forms and the volumes at the plant, port stockyards, and on the water, increased for the fourth week by another 326,600 tonnes on week to 111.4 million tonnes, which would be sufficient for 36.67 days at the present daily consumption rate, or 0.29 day longer on week, Mysteel noted.
Over the same survey period, Mysteel’s smaller-scale study among the 163 blast-furnace steel plants across China showed that their BF capacity utilization also dipped by 0.19 percentage point on week to 77.05% as of November 5, or 2.3 percentage points higher on year.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
Source:Mysteel Global
