Posted on 06 Jan 2025
Production among Chinese blast-furnace (BF) steel producers has continued to decline steadily, driven by increasing maintenance stoppages as Chinese New Year is approaching, Mysteel's latest survey showed.
The average capacity utilization rate of the 247 BF steelmakers under Mysteel's tracking had fallen for the seventh consecutive week by another 1 percentage point on week to touch a three-month low of 84.55% during December 27-January 2. Correspondingly, their daily hot metal production decreased by 26,700 tonnes/day or 1.2% on week to 2.25 million t/d.
During the same period, the operational rate among these mills averaged 78.1%, down by 0.61 percentage points from the previous week, the survey showed.
Mysteel learned that several steelmakers in Central China's Wuhan and Northwest China's Shaanxi had blown off their blast furnaces to start annual maintenance at the end of December, and these furnaces won't be brought onstream until next month.
With the official Chinese New Year holiday approaching (over January 28-February 4), domestic steelmakers are gradually scaling back production, as their profit margins show no signs of recovery, Mysteel Global observed.
By Thursday, only 48% of the 247 surveyed BF steelmakers reported some profits from steel sales, lower by 1 percentage point from the previous week.
In tandem with the decline in hot metal output, the daily consumption of imported iron ore by these mills averaged 2.81 million t/d during December 27-January 2, down by 27,500 t/d or 1% on week, Mysteel's survey showed.
Nevertheless, the steel producers continued stockpiling their feed materials to ensure smooth operations during the week-long New Year holiday, Mysteel Global noted.
As of January 2, total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms held by the 247 steelmakers had increased for the seventh consecutive week by another 2.1 million tonnes or 2.2% on week to reach 98.6 million tonnes.
At their current consumption rate, these inventories would last for 35.1 days, 1.1 days longer than the previous period, Mysteel assessed.
Source:Mysteel Global
