WEEKLY: Chinese BF mills' production slips further

Production activity among Chinese blast furnace (BF) steelmakers continued to slide in the past week as elevated feed material costs continued to squeeze their profit margins despite the recent rally in finished steel prices, Mysteel's latest survey showed.

The average capacity utilization rate among the 247 BF steelmakers under Mysteel's tracking slipped for the second straight week by another 0.41 percentage point to reach 88.84% during August 21-27, with the combined daily hot metal output falling 0.45% on week to 2.37 million tonnes/day. During the same survey period,