China's rebar output decreases 8.1% y-o-y in 2022

For the full year of 2022, China produced a total of 237.6 million tonnes of rebar, logging a steeper on-year decline of 8.1% as compared with the 4.8% on-year fall in 2021, according to the latest data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

For December alone, the country's rebar output slid by 4.4% on year to 19.5 million tonnes, the NBS data showed. Also, this result was 1.4% lower than last November, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.

Meanwhile, China's rebar output in December accounted for 17.4% of the country's total finished steel output of 111.9 million tonnes in the month, and its annual rebar production in 2022 made up 17.7% of the 1.3 billion tonnes finished steel output last year, according to the NBS data.

"Over last year, many domestic steel mills had reined in their rebar output in a bid to reduce margin losses, and those electric-arc-furnace steel producers in Southwest and Northeast China saw their production retreat markedly due to the power supply shortage as scorching heat persisted in these regions in the summer (of last year)," said a Shanghai-based source.

Mysteel's survey on the average rebar rolling capacity utilization rate among the 137 Chinese steel mills it tracks showed a similar trend, falling 8.9 percentage points on year to average 62.4% during 2022.

On the other hand, China's fixed asset investment gained by 5.1% on year to Yuan 57.2 trillion ($8.5 trillion) for 2022, and among the total, the funding in the domestic property market slumped by 10% on year to Yuan 13.3 trillion, while that in the infrastructure sector posted a 9.4% on-year growth, as reported.

As for rebar prices, the national price of HRB400E 20mm dia rebar, for example, dropped by a large Yuan 603/tonne from 2021 to Yuan 4,483/t on average and including the 13% VAT in 2022, according to Mysteel's assessment.

Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com

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