Weekly domestic raw steel production for the week ending August 11, 2012 rose 1.9% to 1.899 million tons (mt) from 1.863 mt last week and up some 0.9% year-on-year.

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 prior months’ reported production & operating rate. What this means is that when production is changing as it is right now, the weekly data is actually understating the change.

Capacity utilization also rose from 75.4% last week to 76.9% this week, slightly below the year-ago level of 77.0%.

The lowest production level since the recession began was 800,000 tons for the week of December 27, 2008, while the highest level 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