Posted on 23 Dec 2024
With the year-end approaching, more blast furnace (BF) steelmakers in China are planning to halt their production to conduct annual overhauls, leading to a quickened decline in the country's hot metal production, Mysteel's latest survey showed.
The average capacity utilization rate of the 247 BF steel producers under Mysteel's regular tracking fell for the fifth straight week by another 1.15 percentage points on week to reach 86.13% during December 13-19, with the decrease being faster than previous weeks.
During the same period, the operational rates among these sampled mills averaged 79.63%, down by 0.92 percentage point on week, the survey showed. Accordingly, the 247 steel mills' hot metal production decreased at a quicker pace of 1.3% on week to sit at 2.29 million tonnes/day, below the 2.3 million t/d threshold again after hovering above it for more than one and a half months.
Among the sampled bast furnaces, only one furnace at a mill in Northwest China's Xinjiang autonomous region was brought back onstream from maintenance stoppage in the latest survey week, but it has yet to produce any hot metal, while in the northern, eastern, and central regions of the country, seven furnaces were blown off for overhauls, according to the survey.
"Frequent maintenance is expected before the official start of the Chinese New Year holiday (in end-January)," a market watcher based in Shanghai believes.
Consequently, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 steel mills under Mysteel's tracking also decreased during December 13-19, falling by 36,400 t/d or 1.3% on week to average 2.86 million t/d.
Due to the mills' slower ore consumption and steady replenishment of the feed material for their winter operations, the total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms held by the same 247 steelmakers continued to rise by 1.4 million tonnes or 1.5% on week, reaching 95.7 million tonnes as of December 19, the survey showed.
The existing stocks would be sufficient to last the mills for 33.5 days at their current usage rate, longer by 0.9 day from the previous period, according to Mysteel's assessment.
On the other hand, domestic BF mills' profitability stabilized during this week, with around 48% of the 247 mills Mysteel monitors enjoying positive margins on steel sales by Thursday, unchanged from a week earlier.
Source:Mysteel Global
