WEEKLY: China's BF capacity use largely flat at 93.08%

The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among the 247 Chinese steelmakers under Mysteel's regular survey remained generally unchanged on week at 93.08% over September 22-28, higher by just 0.05 percentage point from the prior week, the latest survey data show. Accordingly, daily average output of hot metal among the sampled steel mills also nudged up by a small 1,400 tonnes/day on week to 2.49 million t/d, the findings showed.

"Some steel mills in Central and Southwest China saw their hot metal output increase as the BFs they had brought back online last week started to produce at full capacity," a market analyst based in Shanghai noted. In tandem with the high production, the daily consumption of imported iron ore