CNAM: you're certainly right. At 50% capacity (they are no where near 100% capacity now), 40m is about 2 to 2.5 months of production as stated in my post. So they are playing it down a little when they say the blackout will affect only September. My guess is they know through connections and experience how long they will be hit by the blackouts. Looks like they expect to be back to full production by Nov and Dec. So they gave out a conservative number that can be reasonably exceeded.
Another thing to keep in mind is the PRC gvmt is also shutting down (for good) or "consolidating" hundreds to thousands of small steel mills, just like coal mines are being consolidated, in order to improve production efficiency, reduce energy consumption and pollution.
You may have a point about the timing of the news release last year. Hopefully we get another release like that in March 2011.
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