WEEKLY: Chinese mills lift rebar output to maintain profits

After dropping for three consecutive weeks and approaching the intra-year low in the previous week, rebar output among the 137 Chinese steel mills increased to 1.82 million tonnes over December 11-17, up by 1.6% or 29,000 tonnes on week due to mills' improved profit margins on producing this long steel item, according to Mysteel's latest weekly survey.

The production recovery was in line with the findings in Mysteel's other survey on rebar rolling capacity utilization and operational status of these sampled steel mills, with their average capacity use rate edging up by 0.6 percentage point on week to 39.8%, while the operation rate also climbed by