In July this year, China produced 85.22 million mt of crude steel, which indicated the decline by 2.6 percent or 2.31 million mt on month-on-month basis, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on August 14. It happened mainly because the production restriction in northern China, province Hebei in particular, and extremely high raw materials prices. In July alone, China’s crude steel output increased by five percent year on year even despite margins of steel mills have fallen sharply in 2019.
Finished steel production in China fell slower than the crude steel, it was reduced by 1.2 percent coming to 105.82 million mt in July. Restrictions affected mostly sintering machines and blast furnaces utilization rates.
In the January-July period of this year, China produced 577.06 million mt of crude steel and 697.76 million mt of finished steel, rising by nine percent and 11.2 percent respectively, both compared to the same period of the last year.. Though the pace of increase slowed down compared to the first six months of 2019, annualized average of crude steel production is still close to 990 million mt. This figure is 60 million mt above the 2018 level of 928 million mt.