For the week ending January 5, 2012, weekly domestic raw steel production fell 3.9% to 1.756 million tons (mt) – the largest drop since October 2011, but is up 4.6% from the recent low of 1.679 mt for the week of October 27, 2012.

We would caution readers that only half of the AISI reporting companies release their weekly production in “real time” so the other half of this data is estimated using the last month’s reported production & operating rate. What this means is that when production is changing, the weekly data is actually understating the change.

Capacity utilization came in at 72.6%, down from 73.9% last week and down from the year-ago level of 76.5% even as AISI revised their total capacity number for 1Q13 to 30.8 million tons from 32.7 in 4Q12 and 32.3 in 1Q12.

The lowest production since the recession began was 800,000 tons for the week of December 27, 2008, while the highest was 2.005 mt for the week of May 12, 2012. The lowest capacity utilization rate since the recession began was 33.5% for the week of December 27, 2008; the highest was 81.1% on May 12, 2012.

Source: AISI and Steel Market Intelligence