Chinese steel mills generally did not turn off their blast furnaces during the New Year holidays
Blast furnace capacity utilization among 247 Chinese steel mills increased for the sixth consecutive week between February 9 and 15, according to Mysteel data .
During this period, the number reached 83.97%, an increase of 0.17% compared to the previous week. At the same time, from February 9 to 15, daily pig iron production at 247 enterprises averaged 2.25 million tons per day.
Last week, a blast furnace returned to operation after repairs, which led to a slight increase in total pig iron production. During the same period, two smaller blast furnaces were shut down for scheduled maintenance.
The country's steel mills generally did not shut down blast furnaces during the Chinese New Year holiday, which officially lasted from February 10 to 17, even though domestic trade in steel products came to a virtual standstill.
Average daily consumption of imported iron ore among 247 steel producers also increased for the sixth consecutive week, reaching 2.76 million tonnes per day between February 9 and 16. At the same time, most Chinese steel mills stopped purchasing this raw material last week as suppliers left the market for the holiday season. Therefore, steel mills could only use their own stocks for production.
As previously reported by Compraço, Chinese steel mills produced 1.019 billion tons of steel in 2023, an increase of 0.6% compared to 2022. Thus, the downward trend in the country's steel industry has stopped after two consecutive years of decline in production. Pig iron production last year was 871 million tons, an increase of 0.7% per year.
