Posted on 22 Sep 2025
Rebar output among the 137 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel's tracking dropped for the third consecutive week by another 2.6% on week during September 11-17, the latest weekly survey showed. Despite the further drop from the week before, the volume still represented a 6.3% on-year rise due to the low basis of comparison with the September 12-18 week last year.
Underscoring the production drop last week, the results of Mysteel's survey show that rebar rolling capacity utilization among the 137 mills regularly sampled dipped by 1.2 percentage points to 45.3% while their average operational rates edged down by 1 percentage point to 42%.
In addition, steel mills in North China's Shanxi and East China's Jiangsu provinces, along with others in Northwest China's Xinjiang autonomous region, slowed production to conduct blast furnace maintenance during the survey week or had switched to producing more items promising higher margins such as hot-rolled coil, according to Mysteel's weekly report.
Declining output and rising demand caused rebar inventories held by the 137 surveyed mills to fall slightly over September 12-18, with the mills' stocks thinning by a tiny 0.3% or 15,600 tonnes on week to sit at 1.65 million tonnes, according to the weekly survey. Construction steel demand has picked up nationwide as the arrival of mild autumn weather has allowed building work outdoors to resume in earnest, as reported.
The daily spot trading volume of long steel items including rebar among the 237 trading houses Mysteel regularly monitors climbed by 4.5% or 4,562 tonnes/day on week to average 107,038 t/d over September 12-18.
Improved steel market fundamentals and positive macroeconomic signals including the U.S. Federal Reserve's first interest rate cut this year have also buoyed market sentiment, Mysteel Global noted.
As such, Chinese long steel prices edged higher. On September 18, Mysteel assessed the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar at Yuan 3,295/tonne ($463/t), up Yuan 22/tonne from a week earlier.
Source:Mysteel Global
