Posted on 17 Nov 2025
China's total crude steel output continued the downtrend over January-October to reach 817.9 million tonnes, falling at a faster pace of 3.9% on year compared to the decline of 2.9% for the first nine months of this year, according to the latest release by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday morning.
For October alone, China produced 72 million tonnes of crude steel, posting a marked decrease of 12.1% from the same month of last year. The country's daily crude steel output last month registered 2.32 million tonnes/day on average, sliding further by 5.2% from September, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.
Some steel mills in northern China had been requested to curb production at their sintering facilities and blast furnaces in late October to improve air quality of the region, partly contributing to the decline in crude steel output, Mysteel Global noted.
In parallel, finished steel prices remained weak overall in October, while production costs of Chinese steelmakers stayed high with firm prices of major steelmaking raw materials. This squeezed domestic mills' profit margins and persuaded some of them to constrain their operations.
Mysteel's survey showed that by the end of October, the capacity utilization rate of the 247 blast-furnace steel mills across China under its regular tracking reached 88.61%, falling by 2.04 percentage points on month.
Domestic steel demand from end-users failed to meet market expectations for October, traditionally a strong month for steel consumption with the pleasant weather, which weighed on the country's spot steel prices as well, Mysteel Global learned.
For example, the daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese trading houses under Mysteel's tracking averaged 101,282 tonnes/day during October, lower by 1,154 t/d from the average for September.
As of October 31, China's national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar was assessed by Mysteel at Yuan 3,260/tonne ($459/t) including the 13% VAT with an on-month dip of Yuan 1/t, while that of Q235 4.75mm HRC had slipped by Yuan 33/t on month to Yuan 3,365/t including the 13% VAT.
For October, China's finished steel output also declined, with the tonnage down slightly by 0.9% on year to 118.6 million tonnes, but the total production for the first ten months of this year remained 4.7% higher on year at 1.22 billion tonnes, according to the NBS statistics.
China's steel output for January-October 2025
| Oct 2025 | Jan-Oct 2025 | ||
Volume (mln t) | YoY (%) | Volume (mln t) | YoY (%) | |
Crude steel | 72 | -12.1 | 817.87 | -3.9 |
Finished steel | 118.64 | -0.9 | 1,217.59 | 4.7 |
Pig iron | 65.55 | -7.9 | 711.37 | -1.8 |
Source: NBS
Source:Mysteel Global
