Global steel production up 8% in Feb, falls marginally in India

In a signal of improving global economy, world crude steel production increased by 8.8% to 117 million tonne in the month of February 2011 compared with the same month last year, showed the data compiled by World Steel Association (WSA). However, in India, crude steel output dipped marginally by 0.5% to 5.1 million tonne during the same period.

The decline in India is mainly due to some supply constraints rather than demand weaknesses. In fact, demand for steel has been seen rising over last few months even as steel companies hiked prices at least three times in Dec-Feb period owing to higher cost of production and better demand-supply scenario in the market. Local steel producers expect that output will increase in coming months as demand from infra and auto space is likely to remain buoyant.

In case of China, the largest steel producer in world, steel production for February 2011 stood at 54.3 million tonne, up 9.7% compared to February 2010. Japan produced 8.9 million tonne of crude steel in February 2011, an increase of 5.7% compared to the same month last year. However, Japanese production is expected to be much lower in March due to ongoing nuclear crisis. In South Korea, production jumped massively by over 25% to touch 5.0 million tonne in February 2010.

Looking at the European Union, Germany’s crude steel production for February 2011 stood at 3.7 million tonne, up 7.9% on year-on-year basis while Italy’s crude steel production was 2.3 million tonne, up 4.9% compared to the same month last year. In other European countries too production was seen increasing between 6-10%, indicating that the continental economy was continuing recovery despite some sovereign debt concerns.

Elsewhere in the rich world, the US produced 6.6 million tonne of crude steel in February 2011, 5.6% higher than February 2010. Brazilian crude steel production in the month under review was 2.7 million tonne, an increase of 11.4% on February 2010. The world crude steel capacity utilization ratio stood at 82.0%, better than upwardly revised figure of 80.9% for January 2011. On year-on-year basis the utilization ratio was 2.7 percentage points higher.