Steel Market Production Cuts – The China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) reported that for the last 11 days of August average crude steel production was 1.8715 million tonnes per day, down 3% from the middle 10 days of August.

Steel Market Production Cuts – China’s Ministry of Industry & Information Technology (MIIT) has released a variety of new environmental and productivity standards to be enforced starting October 2012, including a rule that requires a company that produces common steel products have a capacity of 1 million tpy and specialty producers have a capacity of 300,000 tpy.

Steel Market Production Increases – Chinese steelmaker Hebei has admitted that local government has discouraged permanent cuts to steelmaking capacity – instead favoring short-term maintenance outages.

Steel Market Production Cuts –China’s Ministry of Industry & Information Technology (MIIT) has reported that it intends to carry on with its campaign to close 7.8 million tpy of steelmaking capacity along with 10 million tpy of iron making capacity in 2012

Steel Market Production Cuts – Custodians of Italian steelmaker group Ilva’sTarantoplant have reportedly received a letter from Italian prosecutors asking them to immediately reduce harmful emissions – a request that according to unions could result in the cessation of melting.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Chinese steelmakerHebei’s subsidiary Tanshan Iron & Steel will be conducting blast furnace maintenance for 45-50 days, causing a total loss of 300,000-350,000 tonnes of hot metal output.

Steel Market Production Increases – Chinese steelmaker Liuzhou has begun production on its 2.25 million tpy iron-making capacity blast furnace number 4 following construction work.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Gerdau Long Steel North America plans to conduct a 5-10 day outage in early October at its 700,000 tpy crude steel making capacity mill inBeaumont,Texasto complete upgrades on the rolling end.

Steel Market Production Increases – Egyptian steelmaker Suez Steel will begin production this November on a new 1.25 million tpy capacity EAF.

Steel Market Production Increases – Mexican seamless pipe producer Tamsa is increasing production capacity by 50% to 1.23 million tpy by way of a new rolling mill that is ramping up production in the central state ofVeracruz.

Steel Market Production Increases – Czech plate and sections steelmaker Evraz Vitkovice has resumed production at its 950,000 tpy capacity meltshop which is now running at 76% capacity.

Sources: Steel Business Briefing, American Metal Market, SteelOrbis