Photo by: Bloomberg
Steel production by South African manufacturers dropped 11.8% year-on-year to 500 000 t in February, bucking a global trend that saw world crude steel production for the 65 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) increasing by a marginal 0.6% to 128-million tonnes.
China produced some 65-million tonnes of metal in February, while elsewhere in Asia, Japan produced 8.4-million tonnes of crude steel and South Korea’s production narrowed 4.4% year-on-year to 5.1-million tonnes.
In the European Union, Germany produced 3.5-million tonnes of crude steel in February – a decrease of 1.6% compared with February 2014 – while Italy’s production narrowed 9.7% over the same period to two-million tonnes.
France’s crude steel production dropped 1.6% year-on-year to 1.3-million tonnes in February, while Spain also saw a 4.4% contraction in its metal output to 1.1-million tonnes.
In contrast, Russia lifted its steel output by 5.6% to 5.7-million tonnes in the second month of the year, while Ukraine saw a dramatic 33.2% year-on-year plunge in output to 1.6-million tonnes in February.
The US produced 6.3-million tonnes of crude steel in February, a 7.9% year-on-year increase, while Brazil improved its output by 2.3% to 2.7-million tonnes.
The crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 65 countries in February 2015 was 73.4% – 1.7 percentage points lower than that of February 2014 and 3.8 percentage points higher than that of January.