Global steel output drops as China growth slows

World crude steel production for the 64 countries reporting to the World Steel Association declined -0.3% on-year in September to 151.5 million tonnes, Kallanish learns from worldsteel. This represented the first monthly decline in 2019.

It came as Chinese output growth slowed to 2.2%, giving a tonnage of 82.77mt. Indian output, meanwhile, grew 1.6% to 8.96mt, but Japanese and South Korean production fell -4.5% and -2.7% respectively to 8.05mt and 5.69mt. Vietnamese output surged again, by 34% to 1.7mt.

EU28 production declined again in September, by -2% to 13.39mt. German production slumped -4% to 3.35mt, but Italian output was up 1.1% to 2.21mt. French and Spanish output fell -10.2% and -1% respectively to 1.21mt and 1.18mt. Notably, Austrian and Swedish production surged 69.1% and 42% respectively to 588,000t and 398,000t. Hungarian output plummeted 29.2% to 109,000t.

The US recorded a -2.5% decline in September output to 7.07mt, while Brazilian output dived -22% to 2.4mt.

Russian output is estimated to have dropped -4.1% to 5.58mt and Ukrainian production fell -2.3% to 1.75mt.

Turkish production, meanwhile, slumped -6.9% to 2.73mt, but Iranian output is estimated to have risen 3.2% to 2.13mt.

For antitrust reasons worldsteel no longer produces a monthly global capacity utilisation ratio. Information on capacity can be found on the OECD website, worldsteel says.

In January-September global crude steelmaking output was still up 3.9% on-year to 1.39 billion tonnes.