In August, China's output of pig iron was 40.05 million tons, down 1.5 percent year-on-year and 4.6 percent from July; that of crude steel was 42.57 million tons, up 1.3 percent and down 5.2 percent; and that of steel products was 47.8 million tons, down 0.2 percent and 6.3 percent.

 

Between January and August, China's output of pig iron, crude steel and steel products stood at 329 million tons, 351 million tons and 399 million tons respectively, up 6.5 percent, 8.3 percent and 10.1 percent.

 

The production cut was blamed mainly on a falling profit, on top of the environmental concerns during the Olympic Games. Some middle and small mills cut or even stopped production in August because losses occurred in the sales of long products.

 

In August, output of small and medium sections was down 9.3 percent; that of rod was down 6 percent; that of rebar was down 11 percent; that of wire was down 5.9 percent; that of hot rolled sheet was down 14.3 percent; that of hot rolled narrow strip was down 27.5 percent; that of cold rolled narrow strip was down 4.6 percent and that of welded pipe was down 3.2 percent.

 

Nearly one third of blast furnaces in Tangshan were reported to shut down in August and only one fourth of local strip lines still kept operational.

 

Forming an automatically balanced supply-demand system is an ideal result. In other words, steelmakers should arrange their operations in line with the market profits, which will make most mills always profitable, while bring 20 percent or more to the verge of losses.

 

Editor:    Ivy

M S N:   noble-ferroalloys@hotmail.com

E-mail:    tiandandan226@yahoo.com.cn

Write to editor: service@ferro-alloys.com