Steel output rises from last year’s level

The Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reports steel output in the United States is up by 5.6 percent in the week ending Nov. 11 compared with one year ago.

The most recent week’s production of about 1.68 million tons, while higher than the 1.594 million tons made in the comparable week of 2022, fell 0.9 percent compared with the prior week.

The week-on-week decline, as Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves noted in late October, suggests the strikes carried out at several automotive plants from mid-September through late October had not greatly affected the overall demand for steel in the U.S.

Domestic steel output was enduring a temporary slump a year ago, perhaps tied in part to increased imports of finished and semifinished steel shipped from overseas.

In the week ending Nov. 11, the steel mill capability utilization (capacity) rate calculated by AISI was 73.2 percent, up slightly from the 71.5 percent rate one year ago but down a bit from the 73.9 percent capacity rate the previous week.

With only about seven weeks remaining in the year, production of steel in the U.S. year to date stands at almost exactly 77 million tons, with the year’s average capacity rate at 75.8 percent. The tonnage figure is down 0.6 percent from the nearly 77.45 million tons during the same period last year, when the capacity rate average was 78.1 percent.

In the most recent week in the five regions defined by AISI, the most steel was made in its southern region, where 755,000 tons of output were recorded. Output in the other regions was 552,000 tons in the Great Lakes, 176,000 tons in the Midwest, 131,000 tons in the Northeast and 69,000 tons in the western U.S.