The World Steel Association (worldsteel) says that global crude steel output was virtually the same year-on-year in November at 131 million tonnes, just 0.1% up from November 2013. Production of crude steel during the first eleven months of 2014 however increased by 1.8% y-on-y to reach 1480mt.

China produced 63.3mt in the month, or 48.5% of the world total, and slightly down by -0.2% from November 2013. Year-to-date production in 2014 at 748.6mt was 1.8% up on the same period in 2013.

In the EU28 total October crude steel production increased by 0.8% y-on-y to 14.3mt. Output in Germany fell y-on-y by -1.9% to 3.6mt. Monthly production fell y-on-y in Italy by -13.9% to 1.9mt but grew in France by 5.8% to reach 1.4mt. Spanish output fell again by -1.9% to just over 1.2mt.

US crude steel output was 7.2mt in November 2014, an increase of 1.5% compared to November 2013 whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 2.8mt, a rise of 2.4% y-on-y.

Crude steel production in Japan in November fell again y-on-y by -1.1% to 9.4mt whilst that of South Korea was 5.9mt, up by 5.5% from November 2013. India's estimated production grew by 4.8% y-on-y during the month to reach 6.9mt.

Russian production rose by 5.8% y-on-y to 5.8mt in November 2014. Troubled Ukraine’s output meanwhile slumped dramatically again to 1.8mt, down -28.6% y-on-y.

The worldsteel monthly crude steel capacity utilisation ratio was 73.5% in November 2014.  This was -1.2 percentage points down from that in October 2014 and -2.5 percentage points lower than in November 2013, worldsteel says. The monthly trend appears to show that unless there is a dramatic fall away this month, global capacity utilisation in December should be at or around 2013’s y-on-y level, Kallanish observes.