Steel production increased by 20% in 2021!

According to the American Iron and Steel Institute, Great Lakes steel production increased by 2,000 tons last week, while US steelmakers remained at around 85% capacity utilization.

National steel production is up 20% so far this year, about 27% higher than in the same period last year when steelmakers fell to just over half capacity at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Steelmakers in the Great Lakes region, mostly clustered along the South Shore of Lake Michigan in Northwest Indiana, produced 638,000 tons of metal in the week ended August 28, up from 636,000 tons the previous week.

Overall, domestic steelmakers in the US produced 1.873 million tons of steel last week, down 0.2 percent from 1.877 million tons and up 26.9 percent from 1.476 million tons in the same period of the previous year. The coronavirus pandemic has drastically reduced steel demand by closing auto and other factories.