WEEKLY: China’s BF capacity utilization rate dips
The capacity utilization rate of blast furnaces at the 247 steel plants nationwide which Mysteel regularly monitors dropped by 0.57% during the week of August 3-9 to an average of 79.12% as of August 9, according to the latest survey released on August 10. Over the same period, the operation rate for the furnaces at these mills also declined, slipping by 0.69% to 78.75%, the survey results showed.
Survey respondents noted that during the week, four more BFs were taken offline in Tangshan in North China’s Hebei province. Also during the seven days, some steel mills in Shanxi, Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces, and others in the Fen-Wei plains area spanning Shanxi, Henan and Shaanxi, decelerated their production under local government orders aimed at reducing pollution but the impact on molten iron production was minimal.
In total, ten BFs were taken offline across the country, while four were brought back online after local government inspectors confirmed the works’ environmental protection systems met the required standards.
Consequently, total daily molten iron output from the 247 steel plants canvassed fell by 16,100 tonnes/day on week to 2.21 million t/d on average as of August 10, the survey findings show.
Over the current survey period spanning August 10-16, two furnaces are scheduled to be taken offline for maintenance while four others are slated to resume production. Some steelmakers in the Fen-Wei area are using the ongoing inspections of their environmental protection facilities to an opportunity to also conduct overhauls of their furnaces in rotation, according to industry watchers, and as a result more BFs could be taken off line or banked. Thus, a further decline in daily molten iron output is expected.
During August 3-9, Mysteel’s survey among a smaller sample of 163 steel producers across the country showed that their blast furnace capacity utilization rate dropped as well, dipping by 0.64 percentage points on week to an average of 75.61%.
Written by Zhiyao Li, lizy@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com
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