Global crude steel production increased by 3.5% year-on-year to 131.8-million tonnes in February, the World Steel Association (worldsteel) reported on Monday.

Africa’s crude steel production increased by 4% year-on-year to 1.1-million tonnes, mainly as a result of a 7.6% year-on-year increase in Egypt’s crude steel output to 583 000 t. South Africa’s production decreased by 0.9% year-on-year to 491 000 t.

Libya’s output increased by 15% year-on-year to 48 000 t.

Meanwhile, China’s crude steel production increased by 5.9% year-on-year to 64.9-million tonnes in February, while Japan’s production decreased by 0.5% year-on-year to 8.3-million tonnes and South Korea’s output fell by 2.1% year-on-year to 5.4-million tonnes.

India produced 8.4-million tonnes of crude steel in February, a 3.4% year-on-year increase.

In the European Union, Italy’s crude steel production increased by 4.5% year-on-year to 2.1-million tonnes, while France produced 1.3-million tonnes of crude steel in February, a 1% year-on-year increase.

Spain produced 1.1-million tonnes of crude steel in February, a year-on-year increase of 0.4%.

Turkey’s output rose by 8.7% year-on-year to three-million tonnes.

The US, meanwhile, produced 6.4-million tonnes of crude steel in February, a 0.4% year-on-year increase, while Brazil’s crude steel production for February increased by 5.5% year-on-year to 2.7-million tonnes.

Worldsteel noted that the crude steel capacity utilisation ratio of the 64 countries that it represents was 73.3% in February, 1.8 percentage points higher than in February 2017 and 0.5 percentage points higher than in January.