China: Blast-furnace capacity use up for 4th week to 88.66%

Over May 13-19, the blast furnace capacity utilization rate among China's 247 steel mills under Mysteel's regular survey had climbed for the fourth week, up by another 0.38 percentage point on week to 88.66%, as more blast furnaces in North China had resumed their operations, Mysteel Global noted.

During the latest survey period, these 247 steel mills produced a total of 2.4 million tonnes/day of molten iron on average, up 13,500 t/d on week accordingly, and the operational rate of their blast furnaces also nudged up for the fourth week by another 0.4 percentage point on week to 83.01% as of May 19.

The rises had to do with the fact that some steel mills in northern China had resumed operations, with a total of seven blast furnaces having restarted after their completion of regular maintenance stoppages, a survey conductor commented.

"After suffering losses from the continuing fall in steel prices recently, some Chinese mills had actively reduced production or scaled down operations to conduct maintenance. While for some other mills, they would even lose more money if they choose to halt operation than to keep production. Thus, these mills had to resume operations to avoid greater losses," she explained.

Accordingly, over May 13-19, the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 surveyed mills increased too by 14,400 t/d on week to a total of 2.94 million t/d on average.

As of Thursday, inventories of imported ore in all forms at the 247 mills including ore sitting at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water reversed from the prior week of incline, down by 1.12 million tonnes on week to 109.1 million tonnes, owing to mills' cautious buying amid tepid demand from end-users and their thinning margins, Mysteel Global noted.

The total tonnage would be sufficient for 37.09 days of their consumption, or 0.56 day shorter than the previous survey period, according to Mysteel's assessment.

Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com

Note: This article has been published in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.