Weekly domestic raw steel production increased 1.2% to 1.929 million tons (mt) for the week ending February 11, 2012, and was up 6.6% from the year-ago level. The highest production on record dating back to 2004 was 2.215 mt on May 13, 2006; the lowest was 0.8 mt on December 27, 2008.
Capacity utilization rose from 77.2% last week to 78.1% this week, which surpasses last year’s rate of 74.8%. However, this was significantly below the 94.7% rate recorded on January 15, 2005. Capacity utilization hit a low of 33.5% on December 27, 2008.
Note: AISI weekly production data only includes real-time input from 50% of producing members; the remainder of the data is a guesstimate based on each company’s prior-month production and therefore the weekly AISI data lags when there are production cuts or increases going on.Source: AISI and Steel Market Intelligence
