Economy
October 31, 2019
Global Steel Production Contracts Everywhere But China
Written by Peter Wright
China’s steel production continues to grow as the rest of the world contracts.
Figure 1 shows annualized monthly global steel production on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis and capacity utilization since January 2000. The OECD has taken over responsibility for tracking global steel capacity. Their data shows that global capacity declined each year 2016 through 2018. Capacity in 2018 was 2.234 billion metric tons, down from 2.322 billion tons in 2015. Based on OECD data, capacity utilization in September on a 3MMA basis was 82.9 percent, down from 86.0 percent in June. On a tons-per-day basis, production in September was 5.032 million metric tons, down from June’s all-time high of 5.276 million metric tons.
