WEEKLY: China’s blast furnace capacity use at 24-w high
Over April 5-11, the utilization rate rose for the fourth consecutive week, up another 2.3 percentage points on week, according to Mysteel’s latest weekly survey published as of April 12.
The operational rates of the 247 mill’s blast furnaces improved another 1.51 percentage points on week to 81.42% as of April 11, or approaching its nine-month high, as 17 blast furnaces, mainly located in North and Southwest China, resumed operations, with a majority of them from North China, as the four-month winter restrictions came to the end.
These mills’ daily molten iron output also surged to its 24-week high of 2.29 million tonnes/day, or up another 64,300 t/d on week, as over the period other than the newly-resumed blast furnaces, those that were back online have been ramping up the output.
During April 5-11, three blast furnaces were taken offline from North China’s Hebei province and East China’s Jiangxi province for their regular maintenance, which will last for 5-20 days, Mysteel notes.
Both the capacity utilization and operational rates of the blast furnaces at the 247 mills are very likely to rise further over April 12-18 as all the mills are trying to maximize their steel output amid the strong domestic demand and domestic steel prices.
Mysteel’s other survey on a smaller sample of 163 steel plants across China showed that their blast furnace capacity utilization rate also hit a 20-week high of 77.69% as of April 11, up 1.62 percentage points on week.
Written by Rebecca Zhu, rebeccazhu@mysteel.net.cn
Edited by Hongmei Li, li.hongmei@mysteel.com
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