The World Steel Association (worldsteel) said last week that global crude steel output from its 64 reporting countries was 151.5 million tonnes in October 2019, down -2.8% year-on-year. This drop is the biggest registered globally since 2016.

This year crude steel production increased strongly since the beginning of the year, reaching a record-level positive monthly jump of 6.6% y-o-y in April. Since then nevertheless the trend has been deteriorating and production started growing negatively in September.

China produced 81.5mt in the month, a fall of just -0.6% on October 2018 but still well over half of the world’s crude steel output.

Crude steel production in India was 9.1mt, down by -3.4% from October 2018 whilst output in Japan was also fell, by -4.9% to 8.2mt. South Korean production fell by -3.5% y-on-y during the month to reach 6.0mt.

In the EU28 total October crude steel production fell by -8.7% y-o-y to 13.3mt. Output in Germany also moved down by -6.8% to 3.7mt. Further, monthly production dipped on-year in Italy, falling by  -3.7% to 2.2mt. French crude steel output tumbled on-year in October by -10.6% to 1.2mt. Spanish output decreased by -7.6% to 1.2mt.

Turkish production was 2.7mt in the month, down by a significant -15.0% y-o-y.

US crude steel output was 7.4mt in October 2019, an on-year decrease of -2.0% whilst in Brazil crude steel production was 2.6mt, down by a whopping -19.4% on October 2018.