In the first quarter of 2007 Italian mills registered total steel production of 8,255,000 metric tons, up 3.3 percent compared to the 7,988,000 mt produced during the same period of the previous year - according to the latest data issued by Federacciai (association of Italian iron and steel producers).
Looking at the figures for Italian longs and flats production released for the first two months of the current year, the Italian mills produced 2.97 million mt of long products, up 14.3 percent compared to the corresponding period of last year. Meanwhile, Italian flats output for January and February this year reached 2.51 million mt, up 19.8 percent on the first two months of 2006.
In the month of February 2007 alone, the steel output of Italy's blast furnaces increased to 1.23 million mt, compared to 833,000 mt in February 2006. Longs production in February this year totaled 1.52 million mt, up 5.7 percent year on year.