In July this year, China’s cold rolled sheet production amounted to 2.692 million mt, down just by 0.2 percent, while it was still up 1.8 percent year on year, as announced by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Steelmakers managed not to cut output significantly last month as they had already reduced production of cold rolled sheet by 3.8 percent in June.
At the same time, market conditions have remained negative for steel mills as auto production in China slipped by 11.9 percent year on year in July, as announced by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), with this decrease constituting the 13th consecutive month-on-month decline. Moreover, white goods production was also weak last month.
In the January-July period of the current year, China produced 18.692 million mt of cold rolled sheet, increasing by 2.5 percent year on year. The growth rate is very small compared to the increase of 11.5 percent registered in the hot rolled coil (HRC) segment over the same period.