Weekly domestic raw steel production for the week ending September 22, 2012 increased a nominal 0.4% to 1.824 million tons (mt) from last week’s 1.817 mt, but was down 1.5% year-on-year. Production has increased just 0.7% since reaching a 10-month low of 1.811 mt two weeks ago.

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, the weekly data is actually understating the change.

Capacity utilization rose to 73.8% this week, slightly above last week’s 73.5% but well below the year-ago level of 75.7%.

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