Brazil saw a year-on-year uptick in its monthly steel production in September. National crude steel production and flat and long hot rolled products output increased although domestic sales, exports and imports all fell on-year, Kallanish learns from a report by steelmakers’ association Instituto Aço Brasil.

Brazilian crude steel production was 2.6 million tonnes in September 2016. This was up 3.1% y-o-y, Aço Brasil confirms. Rolled products output rose by 6.5% to 1.8mt but year-to-date to the end of September this was still -9.3% down on-year at 15.8mt. Cumulative crude steel production was also well down on y-t-d 2015 by -9.3% at 22.9mt.

National apparent steel consumption was 1.6mt in September 2016. This volume was -4.9 % lower than recorded in the same month last year. From January to September inclusive apparent consumption reached 13.7mt, or -19.1 % lower than compared with the same period in 2015.

Domestic steel sales also fell in the month by -1.3% to 1.5mt. In the first 9 months of the year, cumulative sales were 11.1mt, down -11.7% y-o-y.

Meanwhile steel imports also continued to fall heavily on-year, the institute confirms. At 206,000t in September, import volumes were -8.2% lower than in the same month of 2015. The value of these was $158 million, a -8.2% on-year fall. Y-t-d the volume was 1.2mt with a value of $1.2 billion, meaning falls of -58.8% and -55.1% respectively versus the first nine months of 2015.

Export volumes also fell by -13.1% to 1.3mt in September while the value of these also decreased by -8.9% to $620m. Over the first nine months of 2016 exports have now fallen slightly in volume by -0.2% to 10.1mt, but the value of these at $4.1 billion remains -20.0% lower than in the same period of 2015.