247 Chinese steel mills' blast furnace (BF) capacity utilization rate fell for the fifth consecutive week, dropping by another 0.33 percentage points to 87.63% between November 24-30. This was mainly due to maintenance outages at some mills in North and East China.
Steel mills' daily hot metal output also fell 0.4% week-on-week to 2.34 million tons/day.
"Towards the end of the year, three large sized blast furnaces were temporarily shut down for routine maintenance," a market observer in Shanghai said. However, eight furnaces that were previously inactive were restarted after maintenance work was completed, he added.
During November 24-30, daily imported iron ore consumption by the surveyed steel mills averaged 2.87 million tons/day, down slightly by 0.2% from the previous week. Around 39% of the 247 sampled mills managed to make some profit on steel sales during November 24-30, the same percentage as the previous week.
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