# Steel

Iron alloyed with a little carbon: the backbone of buildings, machines and transport, made at about 1.9 billion tonnes a year.

Source page: https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/

Steel & alloying · No. 13

- Not on a critical list
 Steel & alloying · Foundation · Matter

China makes more steel than the rest of the world combined: 1.01 billion of 1.88 billion tonnes in 2024.

Chart: Illustration: Steel

##### Where it comes from

Chart: Map of where it comes from

Steel is made, not mined. Blast furnaces smelt iron ore with coke, then oxygen burns off excess carbon; or electric arc furnaces melt old scrap.

##### Three things to know

1. Recycling one tonne of steel saves about 1.1 tonnes of iron ore and 0.6 tonne of coking coal.
2. North America recycles more than 13 million tonnes of steel a year from roughly 17 million scrapped cars.
3. Making steel from scrap emits about 0.71 t CO2e per tonne, against 2.66 t via the blast furnace.

##### The journey

1. 1 **Raw materials**Iron ore, coking coal, limestone, or scrap
2. 2 **Blast furnace**Smelts ore into molten pig iron
3. 3 **Steelmaking**Oxygen furnace, or arc furnace melting scrap
4. 4 **Casting**Continuously cast into slab, billet, bloom
5. 5 **Rolling**Coil, plate, rebar and sections
 Covered in [What makes something a commodityCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/what-is-a-commodity/)[From ground to marketCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/from-ground-to-market/)[Supply, demand and the cost curveCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/supply-demand-costs/)[Reserves, stocks and depletionCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/reserves-stocks-depletion/)[Prices and cyclesCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/prices-and-cycles/)[How commodities tradeCommodities](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/commodities/how-commodities-trade/)and 27 more

##### Go deeper pick a tab to open it in full

## Other sections

- [Overview](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/overview/index.md)
- [Correlation](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/correlation/index.md)
- [Extraction](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/extraction/index.md)
- [Production](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/production/index.md)
- [Stocks](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/stocks/index.md)
- [Cycles](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/cycles/index.md)
- [Trading](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/trading/index.md)
- [Movement](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/movement/index.md)
- [Criticality](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/criticality/index.md)
- [Characteristics](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/characteristics/index.md)
- [Emissions](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/emissions/index.md)
- [Relationships](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/links/index.md)