The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output fell again year-on-year in October 2015 to 134 million tonnes, a -3.1% decrease compared to October 2014, Kallanish notes. This is a smaller percentage decline month-on-month but the overall trend remains firmly downwards.

China produced 66.1mt in October 2015, a decrease of -3.1% on October 2014 and less than 50% of world production for the month. This is the tenth consecutive month that the largest steelmaking nation by far has seen a y-o-y fall in output.

In the EU28 total October crude steel production fell by -3.8% y-o-y to 14.2mt. Output in Germany rose y-on-y by 2.7% to 3.6mt. Monthly production fell again y-on-y in Italy by -8.6% to 1.9mt and in France it plunged by -20.9% to 1.2mt. Spanish output also fell by -3.1% to 1.3mt.

US crude steel output fell in October 2015 to 6.7mt, a decrease of -8.8% compared to October 2014 whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 3.0 mt, a fall of -2.3% y-o-y.

Crude steel production in Japan in October fell by -3.8% to 9.0mt whilst that of South Korea was an estimated 5.8mt, -5.6% down from October 2014. India's estimated production of 7.5mt grew by 4.5% y-o-y during the month. Taiwan produced an estimated 1.7mt of crude steel in October, an on-year decrease of -17.6%.

Russian production fell by -2.4% y-on-y to 5.6mt in October 2015. Ukraine’s output rose to 2.1mt, up 6.4% y-on-y, as the comparative on-year effect is now diluted by low 2014 figures.

The worldsteel monthly crude steel capacity utilisation ratio was 68.3% in October.  This was -3.4 percentage points down from that in October 2014 and 1.0 percentage point higher than in September 2015, worldsteel says.