Increasing demand for some refractory materials and increasing output compared with last year pushed China’s refractories output to 4.76 million tonnes in the first quarter of the year, the first rise for two years.
China’s total output of refractory materials in the first quarter of 2018 went up by 11.08% year-on-year to 4.76 million tonnes, according to data from the China Association of Refractories.
The quarterly rise broke the trend of continuous declines over the past two years, chiefly driven by rising refractory infrastructure demand for silica bricks, which was up by 41.78% year-on-year.
Within the overall total, the volume of density-shaped refractory materials produced in January-March 2018 was 2.98 million tonnes, up by 8.52% compared with the corresponding period in 2017.
There was also 124,800 tonnes of heat insulation refractory materials produced, up by 24.89% year-on-year, and 1.65 million tonnes of unshaped refractory products, up by 15%.
Output had been extremely low in the first quarter of 2017, however, due to reduced demand and supply shortages.
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