South Africa’s steel production declined by 21.5% year-on-year in May, statistics released by the World Steel Association (worldsteel) showed on Wednesday.

South African output fell to 580 000 t, from 739 000 t in May 2011.

Steel production for the 62 countries reporting to worldsteel was 131-million tons last month, an increase of 0.7% compared with May 2011.

The global steel capacity utilisation ratio slid to 79.6% in May from 81.3% in April 2012. Compared with May 2011, it was 1.4% lower. During the past 18 months, the ratio was at its highest in April 2011 at 82.8% and the lowest ratio was in December 2011 at 70.7%.

China’s crude steel production for May 2012 was 61.2-million tons, an increase of 2.5% compared to May 2011.

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan produced 9.2-millon tons of crude steel in May 2012, up by 2% compared to the same month last year. South Korea’s crude steel production for May 2012 was 6-million tons, an increase of 2% compared to May 2011.

In the eurozone, Germany produced 3.7-million tons of crude steel in May 2012, a decrease of 9.7%. Italy’s crude steel production for May 2012 was 2.6-million tons, down by 3.3% and France produced 1.5-million tons of crude steel, up by 1.3%. Spain’s crude steel production fell 13.9% year-on-year to 1.3-million tons.

Turkey’s steel production increased by 6.6% to 3.1-million tons.

The US produced 7.7-million tons of steel in May, which was an increase of 7.4% from May 2011.

Moving to South America, Brazil’s crude steel production fell 11.7% to 2.9-million tons.