Chinese crude steel output falls 3.5% in August

By  Paul Ploumis 21 Sep 2015  Last updated at  02:54:04 GMT

BEIJING (Scrap Monster): The Chinese crude steel production declined over the previous year during the month of August this year. However, the production was marginally up when matched with the previous month. This is in accordance with the latest production statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China.

The Chinese crude steel production totaled 66,940 thousand tons during August ’15. The production was up marginally by 1.7% when compared with the previous month. However, when matched with the same month a year before, the country’s crude steel output was down by 3.5%. The average daily crude steel output during August was 2,159 thousand tons, slightly up by 35 thousand tons from 2,124 thousand tons during the previous month.

The country’s cumulative crude steel production during the initial eight-month period of the year totaled 543,020 thousand tons, marginally down by 2% when compared with the output during the corresponding eight-month period from January to August last year.

The Chinese crude steel production for the entire calendar year 2015 is estimated to total around 811,500 thousand tons.

The pig iron production during August ’15 was 57,610 thousand tons, marginally up by 0.1% from the previous month and down by 5.1% when matched with the same month in 2014. The cumulative pig iron output during Jan-Aug ’15 dropped by 3.2% year-on-year to 471,160 thousand tons.

The country produced 94,490 thousand tons of steel products during the month, up by 2.4% from the previous month. The cumulative steel products output increased slightly by 1.5% to 745,450 thousand tons. The surge in output is primarily attributed to the sudden ramp up in production activities ahead of the compulsory production cuts in the month of September, NBS noted. Meantime, the steel products export by the country remained almost flat at 9,730 thousand tons in August this year.