WEEKLY: China's BF capacity use picks up to 90.73%

The blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate among the 247 Chinese steelmakers under Mysteel's regular survey ended a three-week drop and edged up by 0.11 percentage point on week to average 90.73% during October 20-26. The slight uptick was mainly because some BFs in North China were brought back online after maintenance stoppages, Mysteel Global noted.

Accordingly, the daily output of hot metal among the sampled steel mills averaged 2.43 million tonnes/day, higher by a small 2,900 t/d or 0.11% on week, while their operational rates also picked up for the second straight week by another 0.15 percentage point on week to reach 82.49%, the