For the week ending November 24, 2012, weekly domestic raw steel production fell 1.6% to 1.764 million tons (mt) – a normal occurrence during the week of Thanksgiving – compared to 1.792 mt the previous week, but is still up some 5.1% from the recent low of 1.679 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 71.4%, down from 72.5% last week and the year-ago level of 73.3%.

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