In the January-June period this year, China’s outputs of pig iron, crude steel and finished steel totaled 435.62 million mt, 530.57 million mt and 701.02 million mt, decreasing by 3.6 percent, decreasing by 1.1 percent, and increasing by 2.8 percent year on year, respectively, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on July 15. The crude steel production decline was slower than the 1.4 percent decrease seen in January-May. This means that even though some mills had to lower production, seeing falling margin, in general production cuts in China were visible only in the beginning of this year, and since then the pace of decline was slowing down.
In June alone, China’s outputs of pig iron, crude steel and finished steel totaled 74.49 million mt, 91.61 million mt and 125.55 million mt, decreasing by 3.3 percent, increasing by 0.2 percent and 3.2 percent year on year. Compared to May, crude steel production in China decreased by 1.3 percent. “We didn’t cut production much [in July] as costs are depend on it, but some smaller BF mills did, this is offseason so some decline in production is normal,” a Chinese mill commented.
In late June (June 21-30) this year, the average aggregate daily crude steel output of large and medium-sized steel enterprises in China - all CISA members - totaled 2.1676 million mt, down 0.8 percent compared to mid-June (June 11-20) this year. The high temperature in the traditional offseason will slacken the demand for steel and weaken the steel prices in July.