WEEKLY: China’s blast furnace use climbs to 75.26%
Source: Mysteel
Mar 20, 2020 16:00
A Shanghai-analyst remarked that he had heard that some blast furnaces in North China’s Hebei province and East China’s Jiangsu province had resumed production over the past week after their latest rounds of maintenance. “The domestic steel market is recovering, which is prompting steelmakers to gradually increase their production,” he explained.
According to him, the pressure of high in-house finished steel stocks and capital liquidity that steelmakers previously encountered has gradually eased amid the pickup in steel demand among steel end users.
In fact, total stocks of the five major finished steel products, namely rebar, wire rod, hot rolled coil, cold rolled coil and medium plate, at the 184 steel mills across China which Mysteel monitors had turned a corner over the March 5-11 week, reversing down by 4.5% from the previous week’s record high, as steelmakers restricted production and demand from end users recovered further.
The latest Mysteel data showed that total stocks among these mills declined at a faster pace over the March 12-18 week, down by a sharp 9.6% on week to 11.67 million tonnes by March 18.
Meanwhile, inventories of the five major steel items held by Chinese traders have started to clear after steadily increased for nearly three months, with the stocks held by trading houses in 35 cities monitored by Mysteel reversing down by a significant 2.4% on week to 25.4 million tonnes over March 13-19.
On the other hand, iron ore buying among Chinese steel mills has been active recently, Mysteel Global noted from market sources. The daily trading volume of imported iron ore port inventories among the 52 surveyed ore traders averaged 1.67 million tonnes/day during March 16-19, which was higher than the average volume of 1.49 million t/d the previous week.
Over March 13-19, Mysteel’s survey among a smaller sample of 163 BF steel producers nationwide saw their blast furnace capacity utilization rate increase too, rising by 0.45 percentage point on week to reach 73.78%.
Written by Victoria Zou, zyongjia@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com
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