Posted on 18 Apr 2022
Over April 8-14, the blast furnace capacity utilization rate among China's 247 steel mills under Mysteel's survey inched up for the second straight week by another 1.48 percentage points on week to 86.42%, as some steel mills in North and East China had resumed their operations.
During the latest survey period, these 247 sampled steelmakers produced a total of 2.33 million tonnes/day of molten iron on average, also up 39,800 t/d on week, and their BF operational rate also nudged up by 0.84 percentage point on week to 80.11% as of April 14.
"Although transportation of steelmaking raw materials in many regions across China has not yet returned to normal amid the remaining restrictive measures to control the COVID-19 spread, it has improved somewhat recently," a Shanghai-based market watcher observed.
"Thus, the slightly easing supply tightness of raw materials encouraged some steel mills in northern and eastern China to resume some of their blast furnaces which had been hot-idled before," she added.
Nevertheless, due to the intensifying traffic controls in North China's Shanxi province with increasing COVID-19 cases, some local mills had been forced to hot-idle some of their blast furnaces given the limited availability of raw materials at hand, Mysteel Global noted.
Consequently, Mysteel's survey found that a total of 15 blast furnaces resumed operations over April 8-14, while another nine furnaces were idled.
During the same survey period, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 surveyed mills increased accordingly by 52,600 t/d on week to 2.87 million t/d on average, Mysteel's data showed.
As of April 14, total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms including the volumes at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water held by these 247 mills edged up by 1.47 million tonnes on week to 108.5 million tonnes. The stocks were sufficient to last the surveyed mills for 38.83 days of use, or 0.18 day shorter than the previous survey period.
Source:Mysteel Global
