WEEKLY: China's HRC output drops off on week

Production of hot-rolled coils (HRC) among the 37 Chinese flat steel producers Mysteel regularly monitors declined over July 31-August 6 to reach 3.15 million tonnes, down by 79,000 tonnes or 2.4% on week, the results of the latest weekly production survey show.

The hot-rolling operational rate among the 37 mills also dropped by 1.56 percentage points on week to average 79.69% last week, while their average capacity utilization rate stayed flat at 82.47%, the survey findings indicated. The reduction in HRC output was mainly due to maintenance work conducted on hot strip mills at a steelmaker based in northeast China,