Steel production fell by 2,000 tons in the Great Lakes region last week, according to Washington, D.C.-based AISI, the steel industry’s trade association. That’s a decrease of 0.35%.
So far this year steel production nationally is trailing last year’s pace by 1.4%.
Steel mills in the Great Lakes region, clustered mainly along the south shore of Lake Michigan in Northwest Indiana, made 560,000 tons of metal in the week that ended Feb. 10, down from 562,000 tons the previous week.
Nationally, steel mills remained below 80% capacity last week, but have been moving back toward that key threshold for financial success.
Overall, domestic steel mills made 1.71 million tons of steel last week, up 0.5% from 1.7 million tons the previous week.
So far this year, domestic steel mills have made 9.93 million tons of steel, down 1.4% from 10.07 million tons of steel at the same point last year, according to the AISI.
U.S. steel mills have run at a capacity utilization rate of 76.4% through Saturday, down from 78.1% at the same point in 2022, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.
Steel capacity utilization was 77% last week, down from 80.5% a year earlier and up from 76.6% a week earlier.
Steel production in the southern region, which encompasses many mini-mills across a wide geographic area and rivals the Great Lakes region in output, totaled 759,000 tons last week, up from 746,000 tons the week before, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Steel production in the rest of the Midwest fell by 2,000 tons to 188,000 tons.
