Global Steel Production in July 2013

The three month moving average of global production in July was unchanged from June at an annual rate of 1.596 billion tons. Capacity utilization was 77.5 percent (Figure 1). For the July data, the World Steel Association increased the global capacity to 2.06 billion tons which reduced the capacity utilization value back to Q3 last year. Year to date global production through July was up by 2.1 percent from 2012. All regions declined except Asia which increased by 5.5 percent. All the reporting nations in Asia increased except South Korea which was down by 5.3 percent. China was up by 7.4 percent (Table 1). This is a continuation of recent trends with no surprises. China now accounts for 49.4 percent of global steel production which intuitively seems unsustainable.