Steel production capacity utilization rises to over 85% | Northwest Indiana Business Titles
Senior Engineer Jeff Farus walks past the newly upgraded continuous heat treatment line with new capabilities at the Burns Harbor Steel Mill in 2011.
Jon L. Hendricks | The temperature
Great Lakes steel production rose 1,000 tonnes last week, while US steel mills increased capacity utilization by more than 85%, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.
National steel production is more than 20% higher than at the same time last year, when steel mills fell to just over half of their capacity at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. With high demand and soaring prices, factories have been operating at over 80% of capacity for most of this year.
Great Lakes steel mills, clustered primarily along the southern shore of Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana, produced 639,000 tonnes of metal in the week ending Oct. 16 , against 638,000 tonnes the previous week.
Overall, the national steel mills in the United States manufactured 1.882 million tonnes of steel last week, up 1.3% from 1.858 million tonnes the previous week, and up 21.5% compared to 1.549 million tonnes in the same period the year before, when the onset of the coronavirus pandemic shut down auto factories and other factories, drastically reducing demand for steel.
So far this year, domestic steel mills in the United States have produced 75.14 million tonnes of steel, an increase of 20.3% from the 62.48 million tonnes produced in the same period. in 2020.
U.S. steel mills operated at a capacity utilization rate of 81.3 percent until Oct. 16, up from 67.1 percent at the same time in 2020, according to AISI.