The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output from its 67 reporting countries was 143.2 million tonnes in July 2017, up 6.3% year-on-year, Kallanish notes. Capacity utilisation within the reporting countries also rose y-o-y again during the month, but dipped compared to June 2017.

China produced 74.0mt in the month, an increase of 10.3% on July 2016 and still representing over half of the world’s crude steel output at 51.7%.

In the EU28 total July crude steel production grew by 3.9% y-on-y to 13.7mt. Output in Germany grew on-year by 3.6% to 3.5mt. Estimated monthly output in Italy also upticked y-on-y by 1.7% to 2.1mt. French crude steel output also rose on-year in July by an estimated 1.7% to 1.2mt. Spanish output increased by 8.0% y-o-y to an estimated 1.0mt.

US crude steel output was 7.1mt in July 2017, an on-year increase of 5.6%, whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 2.8mt, up by 1.0% on that in July 2016.

Crude steel production in Japan in July fell by -4.3% on-year to 8.6mt whilst that of India was 8.4mt, up by 3.5% from the same month of 2016. South Korean production grew by 2.3% y-on-y during the month to 6.2mt.

Russian production was estimated at 5.6mt in the month, down by -8.0% on-year. Ukraine’s output also fell again to an estimated 1.8mt, down by -12.9 %, same basis.

The worldsteel monthly crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 67 countries was 72.1% in July 2017. This was 3.2 percentage points higher than that in July 2016, worldsteel says, but 1.5 pp lower month-on-month.