The International Stainless Steel Forum (ISSF) released the preliminary stainless steel crude steel production figures for the full year 2010.

According to ISSF the global stainless steel melting activities increased by 24.9% to a new record high of 30.7 million metric tons (mmt). This came after 3 years of declining stainless steel production driven by stock cycles and global economic crises. The strong recovery of the global stainless steel production has several reasons: economic recovery, strong end-use demand, re-stocking at service centers and fabricators and also the re-filling of the internal supply chain in the stainless steel mills which alone can count for half a million tons.

Stainless steel melting in Asia (without China) increased by 20.8% to 8.6 million tons. Japan increased its stainless production by 31.5% to 3.4 mmt thus partially compensating for heavy losses in previous years. Korea (+22.1%) and India (+17.6%) also achieved clear two digit growth rates while Taiwan (++3.2%) at the same time was flat. Even during the past years of global economic crises China was the driving force in stainless crude steel production and the country added another 27.8% production growth in 2010 almost 11.3 mmt. All Asian stainless steel producers now cover 65% of the entire world’s stainless steel production.

The next biggest producing area Western Europe plus Africa has reported an increase of stainless steel production by 22.1% and thus achieving a volume of slightly less than 7.9 million tons in 2010. All countries of this area – except South Africa – contributed significantly to this growth. The growth rates of the major producing countries ranged from +14% to +37%. The Americas grew their stainless crude steel melting by 34.4% to 2.6 million tons while Central and Eastern Europe’s production achieved a clearly over-proportional increase of + 43.6% - bringing this area to 0.3 mmt – still almost negligible in global context.

A PDF of the full report can be be downloaded from HERE.