WEEKLY: China BF capacity use up for 3rd week to 88.28%
During the same survey period, these 247 sampled mills produced 2.38 million tonnes/day of molten iron in total, also up 14,400 t/d on week, and the operational rate of their blast furnaces increased too for the third week by 0.7 percentage point on week to 82.61%.
Some blast furnaces in northern and eastern parts of China continued to be brought back on stream during the survey period after the completion of maintenance, a Shanghai-based market analyst shared her observation.
"Some blast furnaces were hot-idled for routine maintenance, while some were forced to halt operations due to limited availability of raw materials amid local COVID-related transport disruptions," she explained.
As a result, Mysteel's survey found that a total of nine blast furnaces had resumed operations over May 6-12. And the consumption of imported iron ore among 247 surveyed mills edged up accordingly by 13,900 t/d on week to 2.92 million t/d as of May 12.
By May 12, inventories of imported iron ore sintering fines held by these 247 mills including the volumes at plants, port stockyards and on the water reversed up by 1.76 million tonnes on week to 110.2 million tonnes, owing to increased shipments after China's Labour Day holiday over April 30-May 4.
The total tonnage would be sufficient for 37.73 days of their consumption, or 0.42 day longer than the previous survey period, according to Mysteel's assessment.
Written by Lindsey Liu, liulingxian@mysteel.com
Edited by Zhenqi Yang, yangzhenqi@mysteel.com
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