Posted on 03 Apr 2023
The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization among 247 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel's survey stood at 90.56% over March 24-30 after rising for the 12th straight week, or hitting a new high since June 2021, as some mills continued to resume operations or lift output on their remaining steel margins and improved sales.
As of March 30, these mills saw their BF capacity utilization rate gain 1.28 percentage points on week, and their daily hot metal output edged up accordingly by 35,300 tonnes/day on week to 2.43 million t/d in total, while their BF operational rate also inclined by 1.14 percentage points on week to 83.87%.
"During the survey week, some mills across the country resumed operations after completing maintenance works or even ramped up operations, in response to their still-positive margins and increasing steel trading from end-users with the improvement in weather conditions," a Shanghai-based market watcher explained.
For example, the daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among 237 Chinese trading houses under Mysteel's tracking averaged 180,792 t/d over March 24-30, up 29,619 t/d or 19.6% from the prior week.
Moreover, "most Chinese steel mills would show little inclination to rein in their output before the government imposes any restrictions," the market watcher added.
Higher steel output saw the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 sampled mills keep rising too – it had increased for the fourth straight week by another 32,500 t/d on week to 2.95 million t/d on average over March 24-30, according to Mysteel's other survey.
As of Thursday, inventories of imported iron ore in all forms at these mills including ore sitting at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water had thinned for the third week by another 226,400 tonnes on week to 91.3 million tonnes, largely due to steelmakers' higher iron ore use, coupled with their remaining caution in iron ore buying and low-inventory approach, Mysteel Global noted.
The total tonnage would be sufficient for 30.92 days of use, or 0.42 day shorter than the previous survey period, according to Mysteel's assessment.
Source:Mysteel Global
