‎Despite challenging market conditions, the world’s steelmaking capacity grew for the fifth year in a row, reaching a historic record of 2.5 billion tonnes, up 57.1 million tonnes, or 2.3 percent from 2022.‎

‎ Capacity growth of 57.1 million tonnes in 2023 has become the highest annual volume increase in global capacity in a decade, roughly equivalent to the capacity level of a major steel-producing economy such as Brazil or Germany, and Asia accounted for 53.3 percent of that increase. ‎

‎ The world’s two largest steel-producing economies: China and India currently account for 47 and 6 percent of global steel production capacity respectively, and China’s capacity is expected to reach 1.17 billion tonnes by 2023. ‎

‎ Although production and capacity have both increased in the past two years, production growth has slowed relative to production capacity. As a result, the gap between global steelmaking capacity and crude steel production is likely to have widened to 610.8 million tonnes last year from 556.1 million tonnes in 2022, reflecting weakness in global demand and production. It also means that the rate on exploitation of global steel capacity fell for the second year in a row in 2023, falling by 1.7 per cent to 75.6 per cent.‎