China's blast furnace capacity use rebounds to over 90%

The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steel mills under Mysteel's regular survey exceeded 90% again, or growing for the second straight week by another 0.65 percentage point on week to reach 90.32% over June 9-15, mainly encouraged by their improved steel margins following the recent rebound in domestic steel prices, Mysteel Global noted.

During the survey period, these 247 mills' daily hot metal output inched up accordingly by 17,400 tonnes/day on week to average 2.43 million t/d, and their BF operational rate edged up too by 0.73 percentage point on week to 83.09% as of June 15, according to Mysteel's tracking.

In anticipation of earning better margins amid the recent strengthening steel prices, some steel mills in East, North and Northeast China have resumed operations of their BFs that had completed scheduled maintenance during the survey period, according to a Shanghai-based market watcher.

As of June 15, China's national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar under Mysteel's assessment rose by Yuan 54/tonne ($7.6/t) on week to Yuan 3,860/t and including the 13% VAT.

In tandem, Mysteel's survey showed that 51.95% of the 247 sampled mills managed to enjoy some healthy margins by Thursday, up by another 8.23 percentage points on week.

Consequently, higher hot metal output saw the daily consumption of imported iron ore among these surveyed mills increase too by 19,300 t/d on week to 2.95 million t/d on average over June 9-15.

By Thursday, these mills' total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms including the volumes at steelworks, port stockyards and on the water edged up by 133,400 tonnes on week to 84.84 million tonnes. Their ore stocks would be sufficient to last for 28.78 days of use, or 0.14 day shorter than the previous survey period.

Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com

Edited by Alyssa Ren, rentingting@mysteel.com

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.