Posted on 22 Jan 2025
China's rebar output registered a fourth on-year decline during 2024, with total production falling by 13.6% from 2023 to reach 195.1 million tonnes, the latest data released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. Within the total volume, 16.1 million tonnes were produced during December alone, which was lower by 8.8% on year, the NBS data indicated.
In parallel, last month's rebar output was also lower by 3.6% or 605,000 tonnes from November and marking for a two-month drop, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS statistics.
This result was in line with Mysteel's survey of rebar rolling capacity utilization among the 137 Chinese steelmakers it regularly tracks nationwide, which showed that by the end of December their run rate had averaged 47.4%, down 2.5 percentage points on month and 7.8 percentage points on year.
Behind the further on-month slide in output last month was the fact that more Chinese steel mills commenced maintenance stoppages on steelmaking facilities or slowed production in response to slack demand in winter and margin losses.
Mysteel's other survey among the 91 blast-furnace mills it follows showed that during December, their average loss on selling rebar was still Yuan 35/tonne ($4.8/t), even though this was smaller than the average Yuan 106/t they had lost during November.
On the other hand, China's long steel sales in the physical market remained lackluster last month due to the seasonal lull, with the daily trading volume of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 trading houses under Mysteel's tracking averaging only 110,676 tonnes/day in December, down 4.3% or by 4,951 t/d from the previous month's average.
In addition, China's finished steel output registered 119.1 million tonnes in December according to NBS, higher by 7.1% on year, while the output for full-year 2024 totalled 1.4 billion tonnes, up 1.1% on year, as reported.
Source:Mysteel Global
