Economy
January 3, 2018
Global Growth in Steel Production Slows
Written by Peter Wright
Global steel production grew by 4.6 percent in the three months through November year over year with negative momentum, according to Steel Market Update’s analysis of World Steel Association data. The reduced growth rate was driven by pollution control cutbacks in China.
Production in the month of November totaled 136,280,000 metric tons, down from 144,972,000 in October. Capacity utilization decreased from 72.9 percent to 70.0 percent. The three-month moving averages (3MMA) that we prefer to use were 141,042,000 metric tons and 72.1 percent, respectively. Figure 1 shows monthly production and capacity utilization since January 2000.
