The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output from its 66 reporting countries was 134.1 million tonnes in August 2016, up 1.9% on August 2015, Kallanish notes.

China produced 68.6mt in the month, an increase of 3.0% on August 2015. This remains therefore at over 51% of world output and still signals that capacity reductions being implemented are having minimal effect on production.

In the EU28 total August crude steel production fell by -1.4% y-on-y to 12.0mt. Output in Germany increased y-on-y by 2.4% to 3.5mt. Monthly production increased y-on-y in Italy by 7.4% to 1.1mt, as the countries steel sector continues to see benefit from restructuring. French crude steel output fell on-year in August by -5.2% to just under 1mt. Spanish output was also down by -11.8% to just under 1.1mt in the eighth month.

Spare a thought however for the UK steel sector. Its well-publicised problems led to a -36.2% y-o-y plunge in output in August to less than 0.6mt. On this basis, the UK sector now ranks below Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Poland as a steelmaker within the EU.

US crude steel output was 6.7mt in August 2016, an on-year fall of -3.4% whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 2.7mt, down by -1.1% on August 2015.

Crude steel production in Japan in August grew y-on-y by 1.5% to 8.9mt whilst that of India was 8.1mt, up by 9.4% from August 2015. South Korean production grew by 1.8% y-on-y during the month to reach 5.9mt.

Russian production fell by -1.9% y-on-y and was 5.9mt in August 2016. Ukraine’s output fell on-year to 1.8mt, down by -4.1%.

The worldsteel monthly crude steel capacity utilisation ratio for the 66 countries was 68.5% in August 2016. This was 0.5 percentage point higher from that in August 2015, and 0.1 percentage points higher than in July 2016, worldsteel says.