For the week ending September 29, 2012, weekly domestic raw steel production declined 2.4% to 1.780 million tons (mt), the lowest level since January 2011 and came in below 1.8 mt for the first time in the last 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 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 fell to 72.0% this week, below last week’s 73.8% and the year-ago level of 72.8%.

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