Posted on 21 Mar 2024
Total production of rebar across China reached 32.1 million tonnes for the first two months of 2024, nudging down 0.3% on year, according to new data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday.
China prefers to combine January output numbers with February's as the Chinese New Year holiday usually falls in either of the two months, Mysteel Global notes.
Consequently, rebar accounted for 15% of the 213.4 million tonnes of finished steel that the country produced during January-February, the latest NBS data indicates.
Rebar rolling capacity utilization among the 137 Chinese steel mills Mysteel regularly monitors nationwide showed a similar trend to the NBS result, with the rate averaging 47.8% during the first two months, or lower by 6.2 percentage points on year.
As for spot rebar prices, the country's national HRB400E 20mm rebar price, an indicator of domestic steel-market sentiment, was assessed by Mysteel at Yuan 3,983/tonne ($553/t) including the 13% VAT as of February 29. This was lower by Yuan 91/t from the end of last year, which mainly reflected the slow pace of demand recovery among building contractors.
Meanwhile, rebar also lost some support from weakening raw materials prices during the two months. For example, Mysteel SEADEX 62% Australian Fines for iron ore had slumped by $23.25/dmt from end-December to $117.3/dmt by February 29.
Mysteel's survey among the 237 Chinese steel trading houses it tracks showed that in this year's first two months their spot trading volume of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil declined by 20.1% or 22,229 tonnes/day on year to average 88,183 t/d. This result suggested the slow pick-up in steel consumption compared with the previous year.
Also over January-February, the NBS statistics showed that newly-launched housing projects by floor area in China declined by 29.7% on year to 94.29 million sq m, and property sales by floor area also slid by 20.5% on year to 113.69 million sq m, both symptomatic of the embattled real estate sector.
Source:Mysteel Global
