South Africa’s crude steel production contracted from 608 000 t in August 2012 to an estimated 570 000 t in August of this year, bucking a global trend that saw steel production for the 64 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) increase by 5.2% over the same period to reach 130-million tonnes in August.

South Africa’s steel output for July had also contracted to 550 000 t from 592 000 t in July 2012.

Meanwhile, France was among those countries that saw the greatest increases in crude steel production in August, lifting output by 21.7% to 1.2-million tonnes.

China and Spain also lifted output, producing 66.3-million tonnes and one-million tonnes respectively. “This translates into a 12.8% year-on-year production increase for China and a 10% year-on-year increase for Spain,” worldsteel said on Friday.

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan’s production dipped by 0.6% to 9.1-million tonnes in August, while steel output from South Korea decreased by a substantial 13.1% to 5.6-million tonnes.

Meanwhile, in the European Union, Germany produced 3.2-million tonnes of crude steel in August, a decrease of 6.3% compared with that produced in August 2012, while Italy’s production dropped by 7.5% year-on-year to 1.1-million tonnes in August.

Turkey’s crude steel production of 2.6-million tonnes was down by 15.4% on that produced in August 2012, while Russia produced 5.8-million tonnes of crude steel, a decrease of 1.9% compared with the same month last year.

In contrast, Ukraine lifted its crude steel production for August by 4.1% to 2.8-million tonnes, while the US produced 7.4-million tonnes in August 2013 – a 2.9% decrease on that produced in August 2012.

Worldsteel further reported that, over the same period, the crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 64 States rose by 1% to 75.4% in August, but this was 1.4 percentage points lower than that of July.