Photo by: Bloomberg
South Africa’s crude steel production increased by 23.8% year-on-year to an estimated 650 000 t in October.
Global crude steel production for the 66 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) was down 3.1% year-on-year to 134-million tons.
The dip was owing, in part, to China’s crude steel production for October falling 3.1% year-on-year to 66.1-million tons, Japan’s production falling by 3.8% to 9-million tons, an 8.6% decrease in Italy’s crude steel production to 1.9-million tons, and a 20.9% drop in France’s production to 1.2-million tons.
Spain also saw a drop in production to 1.3-million tons, 3.1% lower year-on-year, while Russia’s steel output fell 2.4% year-on-year of 5.7-million tons.
The US also saw an 8.8% year-on-year fall in output to 6.7-million tons, while Brazil’s crude steel production for October was 3-million tons, a decrease of 2.3% on October 2014.
On the other side of the scale, Germany produced 3.6-million tons of crude steel, a 2.7% year-on-year increase, while Turkey’s production climbed 2% year-on-year to 2.8-million tons. Ukraine produced 2.06-million tons of crude steel, up 6.4% compared with the same month in 2014.
The crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 66 countries in October was 68.3%, 3.4 percentage points lower than in October 2014. Compared with September, it fell by one percentage point.