Posted on 20 Sep 2024
China's rebar production stood at 12.6 million tonnes in August, with the decline of 32.3% on year being faster than the 21.6% on-year drop for July, Mysteel Global noted from the latest data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday. The August result was also 19.8% lower on month, the data showed.
During January-August, the country's total rebar output decreased by 15.7% on year to 129.7 million tonnes, according to NBS. The pace of decline was higher by 2.3 percentage points than the January-July period.
The large fall in rebar output reflected the fact that more domestic blast-furnace (BF) steel mills and electric-arc-furnace mills had reined in their production last month in response to persistent margin losses on rebar sales and slack demand from end-users, Mysteel Global notes.
Mysteel's survey among the 91 BF mills nationwide it regularly monitors showed that their average loss on selling rebar reached Yuan 170/tonne ($24.1/t) in August, despite easing by Yuan 79/t from the average in July, as reported.
China's spot rebar prices had softened last month amid fluctuations, with the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar for example, being assessed by Mysteel at an average of Yuan 3,301/t including the 13% VAT in August, lower by some Yuan 258/t from July's average.
On the other hand, steel demand from building contractors remained weak during the summer off-season for steel consumption, as spot sales of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 traders' warehouses under Mysteel's tracking averaged only 110,899 tonnes/day in August, slipping by 4.9% from that for July.
During the past eight months, China produced 925.7 million tonnes of finished steel products, edging up 0.4% on year, among which 110.9 million tonnes were for August, down 6.5% on year, the NBS data showed.
Source:Mysteel Global
