In June this year, China produced 76.64 million mt of pig iron, up 4.1 percent year on year and down 0.88 percent month on month, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on July 16. Also, China’s crude steel and finished steel outputs totaled 91.58 million mt and 115.85 million mt in June, up 4.5 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, year on year, but down 0.75 percent and up 1.15 percent month on month, indicating that good demand from downstream users still encouraged steelmakers to produce, though the rainy weather in the hot summer season curbed outputs to some extent as compared to May.
In the January-June period this year, China produced 432.68 million mt of pig iron, 499.01 million mt of crude steel and 605.84 million mt of finished steel, up 2.2 percent, 1.4 percent and 2.7 percent year on year, respectively.