WEEKLY: China's BF capacity use nears 2.5-year high

After a short dip in the previous week, the blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among 247 Chinese steelmakers under Mysteel's survey nudged up again during August 25-31, gaining by 0.5 percentage point on week to hit a new high of 92.27% since early March 2021, according to Mysteel's latest survey.

Meanwhile, the surveyed mills' BF operational rate edged up 0.73 percentage point on week to 84.09%, and the daily hot metal output among these mills accordingly increased by 13,500 tonnes/day to hit 2.47 million t/d, the survey showed. Market sources attributed the production uptick to the fact that some mills