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PrintU.S. crude steel production heated up in July compared with the same month last year, marking the fourth consecutive month of year-on-year gains for domestic steelmakers.
Raw steel output by U.S. mills totaled 7.5 million tonnes last month, up 10.2 percent from 6.8 million tonnes in July 2010, according to World Steel Association (WorldSteel) data.
Domestic mills churned out 50.1 million tonnes of crude steel in the first seven months of this year, up 5.2 percent from 47.7 million tonnes a year earlier. Ongoing ramp-ups at various plants—Severstal Columbus LLC, Columbus, Miss.; ThyssenKrupp Steel USA LLC, Calvert, Ala.; and RG Steel LLC, Sparrows Point, Md.—were cited as contributing to the year-on-year increase.
Michelle Applebaum, analyst at Chicago-based Steel Market Intelligence, pointed out that despite the string of monthly year-on-year gains, the rate of recovery by the U.S. steel sector trails the global steel market.
"The contrast between the recovery in the U.S. and global markets remains stark as U.S. production remains some 14.6 percent lower than 2008 peak levels while global production is 5.3 percent higher than the pre-recession peak," Applebaum said in a report.
Crude steel production for all of North America—the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago—registered an even heftier gain in July, climbing 11.1 percent to more than 10.5 million tonnes from nearly 9.5 million tonnes during the same month last year.
China’s crude steel output for the month totaled 59.3 million tonnes, up 15.5 percent from 51.3 million tonnes a year ago.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan produced 9.1 million tonnes of crude steel in July, down 1.2 percent year on year, while South Korea’s crude steel output of 5.7 million tonnes rose 21.7 percent in the same comparison.
Globally, crude steel production for the 64 countries reporting to WorldSteel totaled nearly 127.5 million tonnes in July, up 11.5 percent from a year earlier.
World crude steel capacity utilization for the countries surveyed was 79.7 percent in July, down 3.4 points from the previous month but 4.9 points higher than in the same month last year.
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