In the January-February period this year, China produced 132.34 million mt of pig iron and 154.7 million mt of crude steel, both up 3.1 percent year on year, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on March 16. Due to the Chinese New Year holiday and the spread of the coronavirus in the given period, the high domestic crude steel output resulted in high levels of inventory, though, with the improvement seen in demand from downstream users following the resumption of production by downstream industries, inventories have started to go down and steel prices have received some support.
Finished steel production in China indicated a year-on-year drop of 3.4 percent to 167.13 million mt in the January-February period of the current year, the NBS stated.