Posted on 05 Jan 2022
Daily crude steel production among the 247 Chinese blast-furnace and 71 electric-arc-furnace steel mills under Mysteel's survey reversed up in late December after the persistent decreases over the prior two months to rise by 34,800 tonnes/day or 1.5% from the prior ten days to average 2.39 million t/d.
The recovery in late December occurred mainly because some steelmakers in the eastern part of China had brought upstream capacity back after completing scheduled maintenance, Mysteel Global noted.
The uptick in daily output was in line with the findings of Mysteel's other survey, which showed that capacity utilization among the surveyed 247 BF mills had increased further over December 24-30 to 75.79%, climbing by another 1.46 percentage points on week. That of the 71 EAF mills also gained 0.14 percentage point on week to 44.74% during the same period.
However, domestic steel demand weakened further in late December as end-users began gradually decreasing consumption with the Chinese New Year holiday over January 31-February 6 looming.
Over December 21-31, the daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese traders Mysteel follows averaged 144,830 t/d, down 30,876 t/d or by 17.6% from the prior ten days.
China's domestic steel prices moved down steadily in late December due to the rise in output and slowdown in demand. For example, China's national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar under Mysteel's assessment had slipped for the ninth working day to Yuan 4,726/tonne ($742/t) including the 13% VAT as of December 31, losing Yuan 151/t from that on December 20 and marking a new low since November 22.
For the whole month of December, daily crude steel output among the 318 mills under Mysteel's regular survey averaged 2.37 million t/d, down 76,300 t/d or 3.1% on month and hitting the lowest since Mysteel started the survey in January 2018.
Source:Mysteel Global
