The International Stainless Steel Forum (ISSF) has announced that stainless steel production rose by 16.7% to 28.4 million metric tons (mmt) in 2006. All major regions of the world contributed to this strong growth.

Crude stainless steel production in Asia grew by 20.6% to 15.1 mmt. Asia now produces more than half of all stainless steel in the world. The driving force was China with production of 5.3 mmt of stainless steel, a growth of 68% compared to 2005. The strong increase in production is partially based on new capacity which came on-stream during 2006.

Until now Japan has been the largest stainless steel producer in Asia. In 2006, total production in Japan was 4.1 mmt, an increase of 2.3%. All other stainless steel producing countries in Asia showed growth rates of between 9 and 13%. However, production in South Korea remained flat.

The second biggest producing area in 2006 was Western Europe/Africa. Stainless steel production increased by 13.4% to 10 mmt in this region. Due to internal reshuffling of company production within different countries, a comparison of country data is not meaningful.

The Americas increased their stainless steel production by 9.8% to nearly 3 mmt. Production in the Central/Eastern Europe region increased by 17% to 363,000 thousand metric tons.

It must be noted that 2005 saw a small decline in world stainless steel production of -1.1%. However, the increase in 2006 growth more than just compensates for the production decline in 2005.

Table 1: Stainless and heat-resisting crude steel production (in '000 metric tons)

After flat production growth in the first quarter of 2006, growth rates increased significantly in quarters 2 and 3. This was followed by a slightly lower growth rate in quarter 4. Growth was initially driven by strong general economic development and the need to re-fill empty stocks after severe production cuts in the second half of 2005.

Table 2: Stainless and heat-resisting crude steel production (in '000 metric tons)