Shanghai steel futures leap as peak season output curbs weigh

Steel futures in China jumped on Friday, with stainless steel rising more than 6% along with gains in rebar and hot-rolled coils, as production curbs during the peak demand season stoked concerns about global supply.

Apparent demand for five main steel products, including construction and manufacturing used materials, rose for the third straight week to 10.41 million tonnes, as of Thursday, data from Mysteel consultancy showed.

Capacity utilization rates of blast furnaces at 162 mills across China, however, fell to 75.06% this week from 75.53% the week earlier, according to Mysteel.

The most-active October contract for stainless steel on the Shanghai Futures Exchange jumped as much as 6.1% to 18,760 yuan ($2,904.97) per tonne. The contract ended 5.9% higher at 18,715 yuan.

Hot-rolled coils futures on the Shanghai bourse, for January delivery, ended 4.3% higher at 5,784 yuan a tonne, notching weekly gains of 5.3%.

Construction rebar climbed 2.4% to 5,408 yuan per tonne at close. It posted a weekly gain of 3.6%.

Prices for steelmaking ingredients were traded slightly higher.

Benchmark iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped 1.4% to 786 yuan a tonne.

Spot prices of iron ore with 62% iron content for delivery to China was unchanged at $147.5 per tonne on Thursday.

Dalian coking coal rose 0.7% to 2,615 yuan a tonne and coke futures inched 0.8% higher to 3,337 yuan per tonne.

The Dalian bourse said it would raise speculative trading margin requirements for coking coal and coke to 15% from the settlement on Sept. 6, after both contracts hit daily trading limit on Thursday.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Min Zhang and Dominique Patton; Editing by Uttaresh.V and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)