Now working into the second year of its global recovery, the world’s primary steel industry produced 151.7 million metric tons of raw steel during August. While that signifies a 1.5% decline from the July result, it indicates a 2.6% improvement over August 2017 and a 4.8% increase over the last year’s January-August total.
The data is supplied by the World Steel Assn., which reports global raw-steel tonnage figures for 64 countries, representing about 99% of the world’s raw-steel production. (Until recently, World Steel also supplied capacity utilization results, but has discontinued that line of data, for “antitrust reasons,” it stated.
Raw steel is produced in basic-oxygen and electric-arc furnaces, and cast into semi-finished products, like billets, blooms, and slabs. Recently, World Steel Assn. forecast that demand for steel used in manufacturing and construction will continue to rise in 2018 and 2019.
