Last week the World Steel Association (worldsteel) released its figures for crude steel production in 2017. According to the association, global crude steel output was 1.691 billion tonnes from its 66 reporting countries in 2017, up 5.3% year-on-year. Crude steel production increased in all regions in 2017 except in the CIS, which has remained stable (subject to current estimates), worldsteel says.

China produced 831.7mt in 2017, an increase of 5.7% on 2016 and representing 49.2% of global output. Asian output was 1,162.5mt, up by 5.4% on-year. Crude steel production in Japan in 2017 fell by -0.1% on-year to 104.7mt whilst that of India was an estimated 101.4mt, up by 6.2% from that in 2016. South Korean production grew by 3.7% y-on-y during the year to 71.1mt.

In the EU28 total annual crude steel production grew by 34.1% y-on-y in 2017 to 168.7mt. Estimated output in Germany grew on-year by 3.5% to 46.3mt. Annual output in Italy increased y-o-y by 2.9% to 24.0mt. French crude steel output rose on-year in 2017 by 7.6% to 15.5mt. Spanish output increased by 6.2% y-o-y to 14.5mt.

US crude steel output was 81.6mt in 2017, an on-year increase of 4.0%, whilst Total North American production was 116.0mt, 4.8% higher than in 2016. In Brazil crude steel production was 34.4mt, up by 9.9% on that in 2016. In South America, total regional production was 43.7mt, up 8.7% y-o-y.