TOKYO: Japan's crude steel output fell 3.9% in January from a year earlier, dropping for the eleventh consecutive month as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to dent demand, the Japan Iron and Steel Federation said on Monday.

Output, which is not seasonally adjusted, declined to 7.92 million tonnes in the world's No.3 steel producer, but it increased 5.3% from December, marking a seventh straight month-on-month rise.

"Production continued to climb on a month-on-month basis as demand kept on recovering, especially from automakers and industrial machinery makers," a researcher at the federation said.

"Output is expected to improve further as one more blast furnace restarted operation in January," he said.

Local steel demand was hit by the pandemic, forcing Japan's top two steelmakers, Nippon Steel Corp and JFE Steel, owned by JFE Holdings Inc, to idle several blast furnaces last year.

But they have restarted a few furnaces since September to meet recovering demand, with Nippon Steel's Kashima plant, near Tokyo, resuming a blast furnace in mid-January.