The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns on the global steel industry has been underlined by the April crude steel output data from the World Steel Association.
The Association said that global steel output fell 13% in April to an estimated 137.1 million tonnes down from 156.7 million tonnes a year earlier.
March steel production fell 6% to 147.1 million tonnes in March from a year earlier.
But the due to the ongoing difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, many of April’s figures were estimates that may be revised with next month’s production update (Australia’s figure was an estimated 400,000 tonnes, down from 472,000 tonnes in April 2019.
China of course dominated with produced 85.0 million tonnes (Mt) of crude steel in April, an increase of just 0.2% compared to April 2019.
India production slumped 65.2% to 3.1 Mt, Japanese production dropped 23.5% to 6.6 Mt.
Production in the EU was estimated to be 10.729 Mt in April, down 22.9% on April 2019.
US production slumped 32.5% to 5.0 Mt of crude steel in April from April 2019.
Production in the C.I.S. is estimated to be 6.554.0 Mt in April, 22.6% down on April 2019. Ukraine produced 1.4 Mt of crude steel in April, down 30.9% on April 2019.
Brazilian production fell 39% in April to 1.8 Mt from April 2019.
Turkey’s crude steel production for April 2020 was 2.2 Mt, down by 26.3% on April 2019.
The slide in global production and demand for raw materials didn’t impact iron ore prices which were firm for the month because of continuing solid demand from China.
The price of 62% Fe fines shipped to northern China rose 5 cents last week to $US91.65 a tonne on Friday.
That was after a 15% rise since the start of the month.
