Posted on 14 Jul 2021
Daily crude steel output among the 318 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel’s regular survey recovered slightly over the first ten days of July, ending the steady decrease since mid-June. The surveyed mills’ production was up 22,400 tonnes/day or 0.7% from late June to 3.03 million t/d on average, according to the latest release on July 12.
The growth in early July was mainly due to the fact that many steelmakers in North and East China such as Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong provinces resumed operations after celebrating the centenary of the Communist Party of China on July 1, as reported. The 318 surveyed mills comprise 247 blast-furnace and 71 electric-arc-furnace mills across China.
With the resumption, the blast furnace capacity utilization among the 247 BF mills also reversed up over July 2-8, gaining 4.99 percentage points on week to 86% after the sharp fall over the prior week, as Mysteel Global reported.
Early this month too, the domestic steel mills’ profit margins saw some improvement with the recovery in finished steel prices fuelled by market expectations that restrictions will be placed on steelmakers this half. This had boosted sentiment in the domestic market and encouraged domestic mills to keep output high for the time being, Mysteel Global noted.
For example, the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar under Mysteel’s assessment came in at Yuan 5,092/tonne ($787/t) including the 13% VAT as of July 9, up for the fifth working day or higher by Yuan 153/t from the end of June.
Mysteel’s tracking among the 237 trading houses across China showed that their daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil registered 203,508 t/d on average over July 1-10, growing by 20,979 t/d or 11.5% from that for late June.
Speculative demand improved in early July with the better domestic-market sentiment, while consumption from end-users remained lacklustre due to the high temperatures and heavy rainfalls in most regions of China in summer, Mysteel Global learned.
Source:Mysteel Global
