Slowing Chinese output curtails global growth, Vietnam surges

World crude steel production for the 64 countries reporting to the World Steel Association increased 1.7% on-year in July to 156.7 million tonnes, Kallanish learns from worldsteel. Growth thus slowed from 4.6% in June and 5.4% in May.

Although slowing from double-digit growth, Chinese production still increased 5% in July to 85.2mt, while Indian output rose only 1.7% to 9.2mt. Japanese and South Korean output fell -0.4% and -2.1% respectively to 8.4mt and 6mt. Notably, Vietnamese output surged 52% to 1.8mt, the fastest growth in July barring Austria where voestalpine idled a blast furnace in summer 2018 for a revamp. Overall Asian output grew 3.9% to 113.3mt.

EU28 output declined again in July, but only by -0.2% to 13.6mt. German and Italian production is estimated to have dropped -1% and -1.2% respectively to 3.4mt and 2.1mt. French output fell -0.6% to 1.3mt. However, Spanish production is estimated to have surged 16% to 1.1mt. Polish output is estimated to have fallen -3.6% to 780,000t.

The US increased output 1.8% in July to 7.5mt, slowing from faster growth in earlier months, while Brazilian production slumped -21% to 2.4mt.

Russian output is estimated to have declined -1.5% to 6.2mt and Ukrainian production was confirmed down -1.7% to 1.8mt.

Turkish production, meanwhile, slumped -11% to 2.9mt.

For antitrust reasons worldsteel no longer produces a monthly global capacity utilisation ratio. Information on capacity can be found on the OECD website, worldsteel says.

In January-July global crude steelmaking output was thus up 4.6% on-year to 1.08 billion tonnes.