February 23, 2012: World production of crude steel recorded a slight upturn in January over December, reaching 117 million tons (mt), but remained almost 8% below output in January 2011.

The industry's capacity-utilisation rate edged higher to 71.3% last month, a World Steel Association (WSA) statement said.

The WSA said that China's January 2012 production of 52.1 mt was 13% less than the 59.9 mt recorded for the same month last year.

Other Asian countries also reported year-on-year declines with Japan down 10% and South Korea down 9%. India's crude steel production in January 2012 was 6.1 mt.

Compared with January last year, there were also falls in production in many other countries.
The European Union's output of 13.9 mt declined 5.6% - falls in Germany, Spain, the UK and Belgium were only partially outweighed by increases in Italy, France and Poland.

Output in the CIS declined by 1.4% compared with January 2011. But production in Turkey rose by more than 14% in the same comparison.

The Americas also produced more steel than in January 2011. There were gains of 5.7% in the USA, 3.7% in Mexico, 0.9% in Brazil and nearly 10% in Argentina. The sharpest fall was registered in Australia, where January production of 380,000 tons was 42% below the 657,000 tons made in the same month last year.

Source: ISMW