WEEKLY: 3-week slide in China's HRC output ends, prices ease further

Hot-rolled coil (HRC) production among the 37 Chinese steelmakers regularly surveyed by Mysteel experienced a small rebound during May 14-20, with the volume inching up by a negligible 0.8% on week to 2.99 million tonnes to end a three-week decline, the results of Mysteel's latest survey showed.

Most hot strip mills operated by the 37 sampled mills continued running normally during the survey week, while one mill in North China restarted production after a maintenance stoppage. Consequently, the average operation rate among the surveyed strip mills edged up by 1.56 percentage points on week to 79.69%, while their capacity