China's daily steel output climbs in early Jan

Daily crude steel production among the 247 Chinese blast-furnace and 71 electric-arc-furnace steel mills under Mysteel's survey continued to move up in the first ten days of January to average 2.49 million tonnes/day, growing at a faster pace of 99,000 t/d or 4.1% from the rise of 1.5% over December's last eleven days.

The faster growth was mainly attributed to the fact that more steel mills in North and East China resumed production in early January as the previous curbs placed on them had been gradually eased, Mysteel Global noted.

Mysteel's other survey among the 247 BF mills showed that their capacity utilization had increased for the fourth week over December 31-January 6 to average 77.89%, up by another 2.1 percentage points on week and recording the highest since last November.

Despite the further recovery, daily crude steel output for early January still recorded a substantial fall of 14.8% on year. This, coupled with the steel mills' low stocks of finished steel at their yards, gave the makers some confidence to lift their list prices.

Mysteel's latest weekly survey showed that total inventories of the five major carbon steel products comprising rebar, wire rod, hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil and medium plate at the 184 Chinese steel mills under the survey registered 4.26 million tonnes as of January 5, dropping by 21.3% from the same period last year.

China's domestic steel prices gained some support from the limited supply, with the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar under Mysteel's assessment reaching Yuan 4,747/tonne ($745/t) including the 13% VAT as of January 10, up by Yuan 21/t from the end of December.

Steel demand from Chinese end-users remained tepid in early January due to the looming Chinese New Year holiday over January 31-February 6, sources said. The daily trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese traders Mysteel follows averaged 145,473 t/d over January 1-10, though it was 643 t/d higher from that for late December, thanks to the replenishment of some end-users after the New Year holiday over January 1-3.

Written by Nancy Zheng, zhengmm@mysteel.com

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