Steel Products Prices North America
February 21, 2016
Global steel production and capacity utilization, January 2016
Written by Peter Wright
Source World Steel Association with Analysis by SMU.
Global steel production in the 12 months of 2015 totaled 1.595 billion tonnes with a capacity of 2.33 billion tonnes. The WSA has made no downward revision to capacity as production fell in the course of 2015 making capacity utilization look increasingly dismal. Production in the month of January was 127,840,000 tonnes, up from 126,404,000 in December. On a tons per day basis production was 4.124 million tonnes and down from 2015’s high point of 4.518 in April. If we look at the three month moving average and plot it over time we see that there has been a significant decline in the second half of the year since and including 2010 which usually extends into February of the next year, after which production kicks up rapidly (Figure 1).
