The average operating rate of blast furnaces at steel mills rose 1.04 percentage point from a week ago to 91.98% as of Apr 24, SMM survey showed. The average capacity utilisation rate stood at 93.31%, up 1.36 percentage point WoW. The daily average pig iron output of the steel mills in SMM’s survey sample stood at 2.2304 million mt last week, an increase of 32,500 mt from the previous week.

Figure 1: Blast furnace operating rates & Capacity utilisation rate

Data source: SMM

Figure 2: Resumption of blast furnaces & maintenance of blast furnaces

Data source: SMM

Figure 3: Pig iron output forecast

Data source: SMM

During this period, 3 blast furnaces were overhauled, 12 blast furnaces resumed production, and 1 new blast furnace was put into production. The terminal demand for steel improved recently, coupled with the decent profits of steel mills, the production enthusiasm of steel mills increased. The maintenance speed of steel mills' blast furnaces slowed down significantly. The blast furnaces that were overhauled resumed in a concentrated manner, and blast furnace operating rate and pig iron production increased again.

Looking at next week, according to SMM's current tracking, the output of pig iron from blast furnaces is still showing an increasing trend; this is mainly due to the slowdown in the maintenance of blast furnaces. Under the current profit of steel mills, the enthusiasm for resuming production of blast furnaces is relatively good; but considering that the third round of coke price increase may be implemented next week, coupled with the rising prices of other raw materials, steel mill profits may be compressed, and blast furnace operating rate and pig iron output may be lower than expected.

SMM242 blast furnace operating rates are freshly released.