Raw steel production in Indiana and the Chicago area, the nation's second-largest steel-producing region, was 473,000 tons in the week that ended Saturday. This was up from 454,000 tons the prior week, according to estimates from the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Production in the Southern District, the nation's largest steel-producing region, was estimated at 624,000 tons during the period that ended Saturday, up from 588,000 tons produced a week earlier.

Domestic mills produced nearly 1.83 million tons of steel last week, up 12.5 percent from the same period in 2010.

U.S. steel mills operated at 74 percent of the available production capacity last week, which is up from a 72.8 percent production rate a week earlier.

So far in 2011, mills have produced an estimated 73.4 million tons of raw steel, compared with 68.8 million tons made in the comparable period last year.

Using steel import permit application data from the Commerce Department, the American Iron and Steel Institute said the United States received 2.2 million tons of steel in September. The September figure is down 11 percent from a month earlier.

Using data from the first nine months of 2011, about 29.2 million tons of steel is expected to be sent to the U.S. market by year's end. That level would be up 22 percent from a year ago, the AISI said.