UNITED STATES June 24 2015 4:15 PM

BRUSSELS (Scrap Register): Global crude steel production fell by 2.1% from a year earlier to 139 million tons in May, according to latest figures from the World Steel Association (worldsteel).

Chinese crude steel production for May declined 1.7% to 70 million tons while Japan produced 8.9 million tons, a decrease of 7% on last year's figure. South Korea produced 6 million tons of crude steel, down 2.6%.

In the EU, Germany produced 3.7 million tons of crude steel in May, down 5.4% on the previous year, while Italy produced 2 million tons, down 12.6%. France increased production by 5.8% to 1.4 million tons while Spain upped its production by 1.9% to 1.4 million tons.

Turkish crude steel production in May dropped 4.3% to 2.9 million tons and the figure for Russia was 6.1 million tons, down 4.3% when compared with May last year. Crude Steel production in Ukraine fell by 23% to just 2.2 million tons.

In the USA crude steel production dipped 8.5% to 6.8 million tons and in Brazil the figure was down 3.8% to 3 million tons.

In terms of crude steel capacity utilisation ratio, the figure for the 65 countries report to worldsteel was 72.1%, 3.4% points lower than in May 2014. In April 2015 the figure was 0.4% points lower.