Despite the decrease in their production costs, Chinese blast-furnace steel mills fell into the red again with their finished steel sales in October, due chiefly to the drop in domestic steel prices, according to Mysteel's latest monthly survey released on November 9.

Last month, the average loss on rebar sales among the 91 sampled BF steel mills across China was estimated at Yuan 82/tonne ($11.3/t), as against the tiny profit of Yuan 21/t they earned in September, the data show.