WEEKLY: China's HRC output tightens slightly, trader stocks climb higher

Hot-rolled coil (HRC) production among the 37 Chinese steelmakers regularly surveyed by Mysteel dropped by 85,000 tonnes or 2.7% on week to around 3 million tonnes during February 26-March 4. This is mainly due to the production cutbacks some mills in North China undertook during the survey week, Mysteel Global learned.

As such, hot coil rolling capacity utilization rate among these sampled steel mills retreated by 2.18 percentage points on week to average 76.92% over February 26-March 4, while their average operation rate stood flat on week at 78.13%. The lower production shaved HRC stockpiles at steel mills off by 47,000 tonnes or 5% on week to 900,800 tonnes by March 5. However, hot coil inventories held by traders were seen mounting higher