July global steel production up 2% year-on-year, worldsteel says

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Total output for the month amounted to 130 million tonnes, worldsteel said, up from 127 million tonnes a year earlier.

China, the world’s largest producer, increased its steel production by 4.2% to 61.7 million tonnes from 59 million tonnes in the same period last year.

Output in both South Korea and Japan rose by 4.4% and 1.2%, respectively. Production in South Korea rose to 5.9 million tonnes from last year’s 5.7 million tonnes, while Japan’s output reached 9.2 million tonnes, up from 9.1 million tonnes in 2011.

In Europe, both Spain and the UK increased production, by 7% and 6.6%, respectively.

Spanish production in July 2012 totalled 1 million tonnes, up from 948,000 tonnes a year earlier, while in the UK production increased to 897,000 tonnes, up from July 2011’s 842,000 tonnes.

Germany, however, saw a year-on-year decline crude steel production in July, down by 2.1% to 3.6 million tonnes from 3.7 million tonnes.

Outside the EU, Turkey saw an increase of 9.7% in July steel production, to 3.1 million tonnes from a 2.9 million tonnes a year earlier.

According to worldsteel, Russia produced 5.9 million tonnes of crude steel, an increase of 3.6% compared with 5.7 million tonnes in July 2011.

Production in the USA saw a slight increase of 0.9% to 7.43 million tonnes from 7.37 million tonnes a year earlier, while Brazil’s output fell in July 2012, by 4.1% to 3 million tonnes from 3.1 million tonnes in the corresponding month last year.

Capacity utilisation in the 62 countries reporting to worldsteel dropped in July to 78.7%, from 80.4% in June this year. This represented a decline of 0.8 percentage points from July 2011.