Global steel production down 0.5% y/y in April

Despite clawing its way back in recent months from a brief slump in January and February, global crude steel production fell 0.5% year-on-year to 135-million tonnes in April, according to the World Steel Association’s (worldsteel’s) crude steel production report for April.

South America was bottom of the global log, with crude steel production having fallen 18% year-on-year in April, followed by Africa, which registered a 10.2% drop in year-on-year production. Though performing best out of its African counterparts, South Africa’s crude steel production for April dropped to below global average, slumping 7.1% from 580 000 t in April 2015 to about 539 000 t in April 2016.

Out of the 66 countries reporting to worldsteel, China and Japan achieved a slight increase in crude steel production of 0.5% and 1.2% respectively. China’s production was 69.4-million tonnes, while Japan’s production was pegged at 8.5-million tonnes in April.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea’s crude steel production fell 1.3% year-on-year to 5.7-million tonnes.

In Europe, Germany saw a 1.5% decrease in April, producing 3.56-million tonnes of crude steel compared with 3.6-million tonnes in April 2015. Spain’s production was also down by 10.6%, with 1.3-million tonnes produced in April 2016, compared with 1.3-million tonnes produced in April 2015.

Italy’s production was up by 14.5%, to 2.1-million tonnes of crude steel, as was Turkey’s crude steel production, which increased 5.3% to 2.9-million tonnes.

Russia’s production of 5.9-million tonnes was 0.4% lower year-on-year, while the Ukraine produced 2.2-million tonnes of crude steel, which was an increase of 11.7% from April 2015.

In the Americas, US crude steel production also increased in April, up 2.5% to 6.6-million tonnes, though Brazil’s production was down 20.6% to 2.3-million tonnes.

The global crude steel capacity utilisation ratio was 71.5%, 1.3 percentage points lower than in April 2015. However, compared with March 2016, it was 0.8 percentage points higher.