Steel Products Prices North America
April 20, 2016
Global steel production and forecast through 2017
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 through February this year making capacity utilization look increasingly dismal. Production in the month of March surged to 137,472,000 tons, up from 121,000,000 in February. On a tons / day basis production in March was 4.434 million tonnes which was the highest level since May last year. 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 then picks up in January and February, (Fig 1).
