US raw steel production rose again last week, bringing national crude steelmaking capacity utilization to 58.3 percent.
The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported Monday that raw steelmaking output from US steel producers in the week ended September 26, 2009 rose to 1,392,000 net tons (nt). This figure is up 0.5 percent from the prior week, though down 31.0 percent from the same week of last year.
US crude steel output has been on the rise for 14 consecutive weeks, though year-to-date crude steel output is still only a little over half of that produced in the same period of 2008 (43.3 million nt YTD September 26, 2009 vs. 82.2 million nt YTD September 26, 2008).
AISI’s raw steel production figures are compiled from weekly production tonnage provided from 50 percent of the US domestic steel producers combined with monthly production data for the remainder.