August Global Crude Steel Production Up 2.6% Year Over Year

buhanovskiy/AdobeStock

According to a World Steel Association report, global crude steel production in August was up 2.6% compared with production in August 2017.
Need buying strategies for steel? Request your two-month free trial of MetalMiner’s Outlook
The 64 countries reporting production to the World Steel Association produced a total of 151.7 million tons in August, according to the report. Global production reached 147.9 million tons in August 2017.
China produced 80.3 million tons in August, up 2.7% from August 2017 (when it was 78.2 million tons). Chinese production growth has been on the decline since May, when it hit 8.9%. Chinese production growth was up 7.2% year over year in July.
Meanwhile, India saw its production rise 3.7% year over year, up to 8.8 million tons.
The U.S. produced 7.5 million tons of crude steel in August 2018, marking an increase of 5.1% compared to August 2017.
Japan produced 8.8 million tons, marking a 0.9% year-over-year increase. South Korea hit 6.1 Mt, holding flat from August 2017.
As for Europe, Spain’s production hit 1.2 million tons, up 6.6%. Italy’s production rose 6.0% to 1.2 million tons. France’s crude steel production was 0.9 million tons, marking a 16.8% year-over-year decline.
Turkey’s crude steel production hit 3.0 million tons, down by 5.7%.

Eyes on Overcapacity

On the overcapacity front, as we noted Monday, steel-producing nations met in Paris last week to discuss strategies to curb global overcapacity.
During the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity, nations discussed the way forward, continuing a dialogue on a subject after the November 2017 meeting in Berlin.
In addition, a European Commission went after the U.S., calling its Section 232 tariffs “unjustified.”
MetalMiner’s Annual Outlook provides 2018 buying strategies for carbon steel
“The EU currently has an unprecedented number of trade defence measures in place targeting unfair imports of steel products, with a total of 53 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures,” the statement said. “The EU has also activated all legal and political tools at its disposal to fight unjustified US 232 measures.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top