Japan’s annual steel production declines 3.4%

Japan’s crude steel production inched up month-on-month in December, but annual production remained lower than a year ago in 2024, Kallanish learns from data by the Japan Iron & Steel Federation (JISF).

December output was up 0.3% m-o-m to 6.907 million tonnes but was below the monthly average of 7mt in 2024. The figure also represented an annual decrease of 1.1%.

This took annual production to 84.009mt in 2024, down 3.4% from the prior year. Within this, output contributed by the BF-BoF and EAF steelmaking routes both dropped 3.4% y-o-y, to 61.957mt and 22.052mt, respectively.

Pig iron was the only one to see an increase in output on both m-o-m and y-o-y basis in December at 5.172mt. Annual production however, still fell 3.2% y-o-y to 61.026mt.

As for hot rolled products, December and annual production declined 1.4% and 3.9% from a year earlier to 6.012mt and 74.02mt, respectively.

For annual production, sheet pilings, bars in coil, high carbon wire rod, electrical sheet and tinplate reported higher production compared with 2023.

Source:Kallanish