China produced more crude steel in a single month than ever before in July, even as output fell sharply across most of the rest of the world. According to the World Steel Association, China made 93.4 million tonnes in July 2020, up 9.1% on a year earlier, driven by strong domestic demand and infrastructure spending as the economy recovered from the pandemic. The result lifted China's output for the first seven months of the year to about 593.2 million tonnes, 2.8% higher than in the same period of 2019. Global production told a very different story. Output across the 64 countries reporting to worldsteel totalled 152.7 million tonnes, down 2.5% year on year. India produced 7.15 million tonnes, a fall of 24.6%, while Japan was down 27.9% at 6.0 million tonnes and South Korea fell 8.3% to 5.5 million tonnes. The United States produced 5.2 million tonnes, 29.4% less than a year earlier. Turkey was a rare exception outside China, rising 7.4% to 3.1 million tonnes. China therefore accounted for more than 60% of world crude steel output in the month, underlining how uneven the industry's recovery from COVID-19 had become.
Source: MetalMiner — https://agmetalminer.com/2020/08/25/world-steel-association-global-steel-output-drops-2-5-in-july/
Photo: Wikimedia Commons (freely licensed).