China's blast-furnace capacity use rises 3rd week to 83.5%

The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among the 247 Chinese steel producers under Mysteel's regular tracking kept rising for the third straight week to reach 83.5% over January 19-25, gaining another 0.52 percentage point on week, as steelmakers continued resuming production from maintenance stoppages.

During the same period, daily hot metal output among the sampled steelmakers picked up 13,800 tonnes/day or 0.6% on week to average 2.23 million t/d, while their average operational rate also increased 0.59 percentage point on week to 76.82%, the survey showed.

With more mills completing their annual overhaul on BFs and restarting operations, domestic hot metal production started to witness an upward trend in recent weeks, a market analyst based in Shanghai observed.

Accordingly, steelmakers' demand for iron ore also climbed continuously, as the daily consumption of imported iron ore among the 247 steelmakers under Mysteel's tracking averaged 2.72 million tonnes over January 19-25, nudging up for the third consecutive week by another 19,400 t/d or 0.7% on week.

In the meantime, Chinese steel mills were still keeping their iron ore procurement at a steady pace to build up stocks of the feed materials, hoping to restock sufficient iron ore for their production during the Chinese New Year holiday in two weeks, Mysteel Global noted.

As of January 25, the total inventories of imported iron ore held by the sampled 247 steel mills increased for the sixth straight week to reach 105.2 million tonnes, up by 2.8 million tonnes or 2.7% on week, Mysteel's survey showed. The stocks would be sufficient to last 38.6 days of their use at present consumption rate, longer by 0.8 day compared with the previous period, according to Mysteel's assessment.

Many domestic steelmakers still suffered negative margins with the prices of iron ore and finished steel products both picking up, Mysteel's other survey showed. During January 19-25, around 84% of the 247 steelmakers were losing money on steel sales, according to the survey.

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