The world’s production of crude steel continued to recover in September 2009 according to the latest output data from worldsteel. It was a modest improvement from August to be sure of a little more than 250KT, but it continued a recovery that has lasted all year.
The world’s record monthly crude steel output was in May of 2008 when it reached about 120MT. As the financial crisis mounted and the seasonal slowdown took its toll, production slumped to just 82MT in December of 2008. Since then, powered by China’s continued expansion, production has recovered to 107MT in September which is all but flat with September of 2008. But one of the notable aspects of September’s output is that Chinese production actually fell by 3% (as noted by Jessica’s post here) and the rest of the world grew by more than 3%.
There’s still an increasingly important division between the prospects for the developed world (down 40% year to date) and the developing world (including China down only 4%) of which more in another post soon. In the meantime, you can study the monthly output by country data in the Nerds of Steel spreadsheet below:
Chinese crude steel production fell 3% from 52.3 million metric tonnes in August to 50.7 million tonnes in September. This is 28% higher than September 2008 crude production.
Finished steel exports continued to climb, rising by 19% to 2.47 million tonnes. In comparison, September 2008 finished steel exports were 6.7 million tonnes. Net finished steel exports grew to 560,000 tonnes and apparent domestic consumption dropped 3% to 47.6 million tonnes.
This morning Nucor announced Q3 2009 earnings. The company’s press release can be found here. EBITDA per ton was $31 in Q3, $74 per ton lower than the EBITDA reported Tuesday by Steel Dynamics. Nucor’s operating performance continues to be dragged down by the consumption of high-cost pig iron that was purchased last year prior to the collapse of raw material prices. According to the company’s press release, the high-cost pig iron has now been used up so Q4 should look more “normal”.
Nucor’s results have been added to the Nerds of Steel earnings spreadsheet. Those of you who watch the earnings spreadsheet carefully will also notice that we’ve now added Posco to the list of companies whose quarterly results are tracked by the Nerds.
Steel Dynamics kicked off the third quarter earnings season today. See the press release here. EBITDA was $105 per ton, which is quite impressive given how difficult the industry environment is at the moment. Watch the earnings unfold on the Nerds of Steel earnings spreadsheet.
Based on reported import licenses, US long products imports rose 7% from 125,000 short tons in August to 134,000 tons in September. September 2008 long products imports were 233,000 tons.
Merchant bar, light shapes and beam imports all increased, with beam imports rising by 189% to 20,000 tons due to rises from Luxembourg, Spain and Korea. All other long product categories registered declines from August.
Long products licenses reported up to October 14th were 111,000 tons which indicates that October full month imports will be much higher than September’s. Wire rod licenses at October 14th are already at 74,000 tons compared to September full month licenses of 64,000 tons. This is due to Turkey re-entering the import market with 39,000 tons of wire rod license applications after importing little or no wire rod since January 2009.
Based on reported import licenses, US flat products imports rose 30% from 353,000 short tons in August to 458,000 tons in September. This compares to flat products imports of 816,000 tons in September when we started collecting flat products license data. Flat rolled imports have been rising continuously since a June 2009 low of 252,000 tons.
Cut plate imports increased in September by 56%, due to a steep rise in Canadian imports. Hot dip galvanized imports increased 36%, in this case due to a large increase from India. Hot roll imports increased 28%, with imports climbing from Canada, the Netherlands, and France. And finally, cold rolled imports increased 19%, again due to increases from Canada.
Licenses reported up to 14 October indicate that full month October results will be marginally lower than September’s.
