South Africa increased crude steel production by 21.1% year-on-year in March, producing 615 000 t of the metal and outperforming the global production pace, which increased by 2.7% year-on-year to 141-million tons for the third month of 2014.

World Steel Association (worldsteel) reported on Tuesday that, in the first three months of 2014, Asia produced 274-million tons of crude steel, an increase of 2.6% over the first quarter of 2013, while the European Union (EU) produced 43.8-million tons of crude steel in the first quarter of 2014, up 6.7% compared with the same quarter of 2013.

North America’s crude steel production in the first three months of 2014 was 29.9-million tons, an increase of 0.8% on the first quarter of last year, while the Commonwealth of Independent States produced 26.3-million tons of crude steel in the first three months of 2014, a decrease of 2.8% over the same months of 2013.

Looking to the month of March, China’s crude steel production was 70.3-million tons, up by 2.2% year-on-year, while, elsewhere in Asia, Japan increased production by 2.9% over the same period to 9.7-million tons of crude steel and South Korea lifted its output by 8% to 6.1-million tons.

In the EU, Germany produced four-million tons of crude steel in March, a year-on-year increase of 6.1%, while Italy increased output by 8% to 2.4-million tons and France lifted crude steel production 4.1% to 1.4-million tons.

Spain, meanwhile, produced 1.3-million tons of crude steel, up by 4.1% year-on-year, while, in contrast, Turkey narrowed its contribution by 4.3% to 2.8-million tons.

At six-million tons of crude steel, Russia’s output remained relatively flat, while the Ukraine’s production dropped by 7.7% to 2.7-million tons in March.

The US lifted steel production marginally by 0.9% to 7.4-million tons for the month.

The crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 65 countries reporting to worldsteel dropped 0.4 percentage points to 79% in March.