The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output from its 64 reporting countries was 155 million tonnes in March 2019, up 4.9% year-on-year. China produced 80.3mt in the month, an increase of 10% on March 2018 and still well over half of the world’s crude steel output.

Crude steel production in India was 9.4mt, down by -1.0% from March 2018 whilst output in Japan was unchanged y-o-y at 9.1mt. South Korean production rose by 2.8% y-on-y during the month to reach 6.3mt.

In the EU28 total March crude steel production slipped by just -1.2% y-o-y to 15.0mt. Estimated output in Germany also moved down slightly by -1.1% to 3.7mt. Monthly production hardly moved on-year in Italy, slipping by just -0.3% to 2.3mt. French crude steel output rose on-year in March by 2.3% to just under 1.4mt. Spanish output increased by 5.9% to 1.4mt.

US crude steel output was 7.8mt in March 2019, an on-year increase of 5.7% whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 2.8mt, down by -8.6% on March 2018.

Russian estimated production was 5.8mt in the month, -6.5% down on-year. Ukraine’s output rose meanwhile to 2.0mt, up by 15.0%, same basis. Turkish production was 3mt in the month, down by -11.7% y-o-y.