Worldsteel Aug output up 0.6% on year, driven by China

New York — Crude steel production in the 64 countries reporting to the World Steel Association grew 0.6% on the year to 156.2 million mt in August, the association said Sept 24.

Last month production in Asia went up by 4.8% on the year to 120.2 million mt, with Chinese production increasing 8.4% to 94.8 million mt. Asia's second largest producer, India's, production fell 4.4% to 8.5 million mt and Japan experienced the largest decrease of 20.6% year on year to 6.4 million mt of crude steel.

European production fell 16.6% to 9.31 million mt. The continent's top steel producer, Germany's, crude steel output decreased 13.4% to 2.8 million mt, and second-place Italy bucked the trend with production increasing 9.7% to 936,000 mt. France produced 722,000 mt, 31.2% less than a year earlier and Spain's production fell 32.5% to 696,000 mt.

Turkish crude steel production was 3.2 million mt, up 22.9%.

Production in the Commonwealth of Independent States was 7.9 million mt in August, down 6.2% on the year. Ukraine produced 1.8 million mt, down 5.7% on August 2019.

In North America output shrank 23.7% to 7.7 million mt with the US producing 5.6 million mt, 24.4% less than in August 2019.

In South America production went down by 1.7% to 3.3 million mt with all countries in the region posting a decrease with the sole exception of the largest producer, Brazil, where crude steel output grew 6.5% on the year to 2.7 million mt.

Middle Eastern producers' output fell 9.5% year on year to 3 million mt.