Five Chinese steel mills have announced their maintenance plans for October. As social inventories continued to increase under the influence of the holiday in the first week of October, market supply in the short term will not be under pressure due to maintenance, Kallanish notes.

Baotou Iron & Steel expects to conduct maintenance on two hot strip mills in turn in October, each for about ten days. The maintenance on the 2,250mm hot rolling mill is expected to start in mid-October and the 1,780mm hot rolling mill is expected to be halted at the end of October, affecting combined hot rolled coil output of 150,000 tonnes over the month.

Changda Thickplate Factory suspended production for five days on 1-5 October, affecting a total output of 15,000t of thick plate. The steelmaker has already resumed normal production since 6 October.

Magang, Changqiang Iron & Steel and Hegang Xuangang, meanwhile, plan to halt their bar mills in October, affecting around 180,000t of steel bar production. Magang announced it would run maintenance on one 2,500m3 blast furnace for four months from 10 October, reducing 750,000t of iron output in total.