World crude steel production for February 2014 increased by 0.6% when compared with figures for February 2013, claims the worldsteel Association.
The February figure was 125Mt from the 65 countries reporting to worldsteel.
China's crude steel production for the month was estimated at 62.1Mt. For both January and February this year, China produced 130.8Mt. January's figure has been revised upwards to 68.7Mt.
Japan increased production by 1.4% over 2013 to 8.4Mt and South Korea's figure was up 6.2% to 5.3Mt.
In the EU, Germany and Italy increased production by 4.2% and 3.6% respectively (3.6Mt and 2.2Mt) while France witnessed a decreae of -3.9% with a figure of 1.2Mt. The big winner was Spain, which increased production by 10.2% (1.2Mt).
The Turkish steel industry saw a rise of 0.7% in its crude steel production (2.7Mt).
Russia produced 5.3Mt of crude steel, a decrease of -3.1% when compared with the same period last year and the Ukrainian industry's production was down 10.7% to 2.3Mt.
In the USA 6.7Mt of crude steel was produced in February 2014, down -1.7% on February 2013.
Brazilian crude steel production was up 1.2% at 2.6Mt.
In terms of the crude steel utilisation ratio for the 65 countries reporting to worldsteel, the figure was 77.6%, which was two percentage points lower than in February 2013 but 0.7 percentage points higher than in January 2014.