WEEKLY: Chinese BF mills' production falls for 3 weeks

China's blast-furnace (BF) steelmakers further reined in production during the past week in response to their widened profit losses and still-sluggish steel demand from end-users, Mysteel's latest survey showed.

Mysteel's tracking showed that the average capacity utilization rate among the 247 BF steelmakers during July 17-23 decreased for the third straight week, down by another 0.6 percentage point to sit at 89.2%. Their combined daily hot metal output accordingly shrank further by 0.6% on week to average 2.38