Chinese BF mills' weekly production rises to 13-month high

• Imported iron ore consumption climbs to eight-month high
  
  
• BF capacity utilisation reaches 91.1% amid higher hot metal production
  
  

Mysteel Global: Production among China's blast furnace (BF) steelmakers increased for the third straight week during June 19-25, reaching the highest level since May last year, Mysteel's latest survey showed.

During the latest survey period, the average capacity utilization rate among the 247 BF steel producers under Mysteel's tracking increased by 0.3 percentage point on week to 91.1%, while their combined daily hot metal output also picked up by 0.7% from the prior week to average 2.43 million tonnes/day.

Over the same period, the average operational rate among these 247 BF mills was 84.4%, moving up by 0.2 percentage point on week, the survey showed.

Some BF steelmakers completed their overhauls and restarted production in the past week, while a few mills that had previously resumed operations from regular maintenance raised their production further, Mysteel Global noted.

As such, the total consumption of imported iron ore by these 247 BF steelmakers also increased 0.3% on week to touch an eight-month high of 2.99 million t/d during June 19-25, according to Mysteel's tracking.

The total inventories of imported iron ore in all forms held by these 247 mills, including those their works, in transit, and at ports, went up 0.5% from a week earlier to 89.7 million tonnes as of June 25. The existing stocks would be sufficient to last these mills for 30 days at their current usage rate, unchanged from the previous period, according to Mysteel's assessment.

However, the robust production among domestic BF steelmakers may not be sustained in the coming weeks, Mysteel's survey suggests, as many steel mills have seen their profit margins shrink continuously and more mills have slipped into losses.

By June 25, around 51% of the 247 BF mills under Mysteel's monitoring could make some profits on selling their products, lower by 5 percentage points from the previous week.

Note: This article is published in accordance with a content sharing agreement between Mysteel Global and BigMint