Worldsteel published May’s world crude steel production on June 22nd. World crude steel production was 139.3 million metric tonnes, 2.1% lower than in May 2014. World output for the first five months of 2015 was 1.7% lower than in the same period last year.
China accounted for 50% of world production in May with output of 69.95M tonnes, down 1.7% compared to May 2014. Elsewhere in Asia, Japanese production declined 7.0%, South Korean output dropped 2.6%, but Indian output rose 4.0%. Outside of Asia, European Union production grew 0.7% between May 2014 and May 2015, despite a 5.4% fall in Germany and a 12.6% drop in Italy. Significant declines were also shown in the US, where production fell 8.5%, and in the Ukraine, where production was down 23.0%.
All the data for May 2015 and for a number of prior years can be found in the Nerds spreadsheet below.