South American Countries' Crude Steel Output Tanked 11%

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The crude steel production by South American countries recorded sharp decline by 115 year-on-year in August 2019, says the latest monthly crude steel statistics published by the World Steel Association (worldsteel). The regional production totalled 3.346 million tonnes (Mt) during the month, as compared with the production of 3.759 Mt in the same month a year before.

The key steel producer in the region was Brazil with an output of 2.524 Mt, representing more than 75% of the total production by the region. The steel output by the country tumbled by 13.45 upon comparison with the previous year. The country had produced 2.914 Mt of crude steel in August last year.

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The second largest steel producer was Argentina, whose output dropped by 4.3% over the previous year to total 436,000 tonnes during the month. In third place was Colombia with an estimated production of nearly 115,000 tonnes.

The above top three producers together produced 3.075 Mt of crude steel, thereby accounting for almost 92% of the total regional output.

The region produced 28.113 Mt of crude steel during the initial eight-month period in 2019, down by 5.8% when matched with the comparable eight-month period in 2018. The Venezuelan output was down by more than 51% year-on-year. The top five producers during Jan-Aug ’19 were Brazil (22.215 Mt), Argentina (3.173 Mt), Peru (821,000 t), Colombia (749,000 t) and Chile (641,000 t).