Strong Chinese growth drives global crude steel output

The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output from its 64 reporting countries was 156.6 million tonnes in October 2018, up 5.8% year-on-year, Kallanish notes. China produced 82.6mt in the month, a hike of 9.1% on October 2017 and still clearly well over half of the world’s crude steel output.

Total October crude steel production In the EU28 was flat y-o-y at 14.8mt (-0.4%). Estimated output in Germany rose by 1.4% y-on-y to 3.6mt. Monthly production also grew slightly y-on-y in Italy by 1.1% to 2.3mt. French crude steel output fell back on-year however in October by -3.5% to 1.3mt. Spanish output also fell, but more heavily by -7.4% to 1.3mt, same comparison.

Crude steel production in India in October rose y-o-y by just 0.4% to 8.5mt whilst that of Japan was 8.6mt, down by -4.5%% from October 2017. South Korean production rose by 3.5% y-o-y during the month to 6.2mt.

US crude steel output was 7.6mt in October 2018, an on-year increase of 10.5%, whilst in Brazil crude steel production was an estimated 3.1mt, up by 3.0% on the prior-year period.

Russian estimated production was 6.0mt in the month, up by 0.4% on-year. Ukraine’s output also fell meanwhile to 1.8mt, down by -6.7%, same basis.

Turkey’s crude steel production for October 2018 was 3.2mt, a decrease of -4.3% compared to October 2017.

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.