Posted on 04 Aug 2021
Daily crude steel output among China’s 318 steel mills under Mysteel’s survey reversed down over the last eleven days of July to a three-month low of 3 million tonnes/day on average, mainly as more domestic steel mills had responded to their local authorities’ command on lowering steel output and tepid steel demand in summer had been discouraging too.
Mysteel’s latest survey released on August 1 showed that daily crude steel production for July 21-31 was 80,500 t/d or 2.4% lower from the average for the prior ten days.
The 318 surveyed mills, comprising 247 blast-furnace and 71 electric-arc-furnace mills, thus, saw their daily crude steel output average 3.03 million t/d for the whole month of July, which was down 22,200 t/d or 0.7% on month, Mysteel’s data showed.
The capacity utilization among these 247 BF mills, thus, declined for the second week to 86.83% over July 23-29, or down another 1.21 percentage points on week, and that among the 71 EAF mills also fell to its 4.5-month low of 64.05% during the same period after two weeks of declines.
By the end of July, many Chinese provinces such as Shandong, Jiangsu and Anhui had notified their local mills of steel production cuts for remainder of this year, and some steel producers had acted accordingly by reducing their steelmaking productivity by consuming lower-grade iron ore, conducting maintenance on their steelmaking facilities, or delaying the commissioning of new projects, Mysteel Global learned.
On the other hand, China’s actual steel demand stayed lacklustre amid the adverse weather in summer for most of China, and over July 21-31, daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil under among China’s 237 trading houses under Mysteel’s tracking averaged 170,740 t/d, down further by 20,098 t/d or 10.5% from that for July 11-20.
In contrast, the expectation on lower steel output had lent support to the domestic steel prices, and as of July 30, the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar, a bellwether of China’s steel-market sentiment, was assessed by Mysteel at Yuan 5,479/tonne ($848/t) including the 13% VAT, the highest since May 20 or up Yuan 142/t from July 20.
Source:Mysteel Global
