Global production of pig iron in January 2023 increased by 0.4% y/y

In January 2023, the global production of pig iron increased by 0.4% compared to the same month in 2022 – up to 112.9 million tons. This is reported by Ukrmetalurgprom with thr reference to WorldSteel Association’s data.

World production of pig iron by the blast furnace method for the month amounted to 104.03 million tons, and by the method of direct reduction iron (DRI) – 8.91 million tons.

Compared to December 2022, the global production of pig iron in January 2023 increased by 1.1%, blast furnace iron – by 1.8%, and iron produced by DRI method – decreased by 2.9%.

The largest pig iron producing countries as of January 2023 are:

• China – 69.44 million tons (+5.4% y/y);
• India – 11.06 million tons (+6.6% y/y);
• Japan – 5.3 million tons (-8.2% y/y).

In January 2023, Ukraine produced 384,000 tons of pig iron, which is 78.5% less than in January 2022. Thus, the country dropped to 19th place in the ranking of world iron producers.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in 2022 world production of pig iron decreased by 3% compared to 2021 – to 1.39 billion tons. 1.28 billion tons of pig iron were produced by the blast furnace method, and 110.52 million tons – by DRI method. The top three producers of pig iron in 2022 are: China – 863.83 million tons (-0.8% y/y), India – 121.9 million tons (+4.4% y/y), Japan – 64.1 million tons (-8 .8% y/y). Ukraine took 15th place in the ranking of world iron producers with an indicator of 6.39 million tons (-69.8% y/y).

Also, global steel production in 2022 decreased by 10.8% compared to 2021 – to 140.7 million tons. In the top three there were China – 1.013 billion tons (-2.1% y/y), India – 124, 7 million tons (+5.5% y/y), Japan – 89.2 million t (-7.4% y/y). Ukraine took 25th place with a result of 6.3 million tons (-70.7% y/y).