NBS: China’s July rebar output loses 1.4% YoY
China’s production of rebars in July contracted by another 1.4% on year to 17.4 million tonnes, according to new data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on August 16. Nevertheless, output during this year’s first seven months totaled 116 million tonnes, up by 5% on year, though growth over the seven months was 1 percentage point lower than that recorded for January-June, the NBS data shows.
The decline in rebar output last month was mainly the result of the strict capacity and output constraints imposed on steelmakers’ blast furnace and sintering operations in North China’s Hebei and East China’s Jiangsu provinces to help battle air pollution, as Mysteel reported. These are China’s two largest steel-producing provinces, accounting for 36% of the country’s total steel production last year.
Significantly however, despite the fact that steelmakers in the country’s two largest steel hubs were struggling under production constraints, July output nationwide was just 0.1% lower on month. “It is because those mills that weren’t forced to surrender to strict capacity requirements endeavored to improve their production efficiency by all means possible to crank up output,” a Shanghai-based industry source commented. “In fact, they were chasing after the healthy profit margins while finished steel prices stay high,” he told Mysteel.
As of July 27, the utilization rate for rolling rebars at the 139 steelmakers countrywide regularly monitored by Mysteel improved by 2.3 percentage points over the month to 75.7%, according to Mysteel’s database. In parallel, rebar prices in most markets spent last month constantly climbing, with Mysteel’s national average benchmark price for HRB 400 20mm dia rebar gaining Yuan 189/tonne ($28/t) on month to Yuan 4,331/t as of July 31.
Written by Venus Wang, wangyi@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com
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