Posted on 18 Nov 2024
China's crude steel production maintained the downtrend to total 850.73 million tonnes over January-October, while the on-year fall slowed to 3% from 3.6% for the first nine months, according to the latest release by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday morning.
The narrowed year-on-year decrease was mainly due to a recovery in crude steel output last month. For October alone, the country produced 81.88 million tonnes of crude steel, higher by 2.9% from the same period last year, the NBS data showed.
On a daily basis, China's crude steel output averaged 2.64 million tonnes/day in October, rising by another 2.8% from the previous month, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.
Many Chinese steel producers maintained their production at a relatively high level last month, as they enjoyed healthy profit margins on finished steel sales.
The result was in line with Mysteel's weekly survey, which showed that over October 25-31, the capacity utilization rate among the 247 blast-furnace mills nationwide monitored by Mysteel reached 88.4%, up by 2.79 percentage points from September, and that among the 87 EAF mills under Mysteel's tracking witnessed a larger on-month growth of 9.64 percentage points to 54.35%.
However, China's finished steel prices were not so strong in October with the softening market sentiment, as steel demand from end-users failed to meet market expectations for the traditional peak season for steel consumption, Mysteel Global noted.
As of October 31, the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar, a bellwether of domestic steel-market sentiment under Mysteel's assessment, came in at Yuan 3,631/tonne ($502/t) including the 13% VAT, sliding by Yuan 313/t from one month before.
Steel transactions in the physical market remained lackluster last month, with the daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 trading houses under Mysteel's tracking averaging 121,307 t/d, down by 1,333 t/d on month.
For October, China's finished steel output registered 119.4 million tonnes, increasing by 3.5% on year, taking the total production for the first 10 months higher by 0.5% on year to 1.16 billion tonnes, according to the NBS statistics.
China's steel output for Jan-Oct
| Oct 2024 | Jan-Oct 2024 | ||
Volume (mln t) | YoY (%) | Volume (mln t) | YoY (%) | |
Crude steel | 81.88 | 2.9 | 850.73 | -3.0 |
Finished steel | 119.41 | 3.5 | 1,164.84 | 0.5 |
Pig iron | 70.26 | 1.4 | 715.11 | -4.0 |
Source: NBS
Source:Mysteel Global
