The World Steel Association just released its Autumn 2009 global steel demand forecast. The detailed forecast by country is available here. Global demand is expected to fall to just over 1.1 billion metric tonnes (BMT) in 2009, down from 1.2 BMT in 2008. In 2010, demand is forecast to grow by 9% and get back to the 2008 level.
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Chinese crude steel production rose 3% from 50.7 million metric tonnes in July to 52.3 million tonnes in August. This is 23% higher than August 2008 production.
Finished steel exports continued the climb started in June by increasing 15% in August to 2.08 million tonnes. In comparison, last year’s August exports were 7.68 million tonnes. Net finished steel exports in August grew to 490,000 tonnes and apparent domestic consumption of finished steel increased 2% to 49.3 million tonnes.
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The recent divergent trends in regional steel production continue according to the latest crude steel production figures from worldsteel published today. Overall global crude steel production rose about 2.5% in August over the prior month. But year-to-date output versus 2008 is down 18%.
The experience of different regions or economic groups is significantly different. China production grew over 3% in the month to a record 52.3MT. This puts China 6% up on production through August of last year. The rest of the world as a whole by contrast is down 32% year-to-date. And if that data is broken into Developed World and non-China Developing World the declines year-to-date are 42% and 21% respectively. All the data is in the Nerds of Steel production spreadsheet below which also contains the same data by month and country back to 2006.
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Based on reported import licenses, US flat products imports rose 27% from 291,000 short tons in July to 369,000 tons in August. This compares to flat products imports of 816,000 tons in September 2008 when we started collecting flat products license data.
Hot dip galvanized imports showed the only decline from 68,000 tons in July to 61,000 tons in August. Hot roll imports increased 42% to 213,000 tons, largely due to material from Korea and Australia. Cold roll imports rose 39% to 70,000 tons, here mainly the result of a rise from Brazil. And finally cut plate imports grew 11% to 26,000 tons, mainly due to Canadian plate.
Licenses reported up to 15 September indicate that full month September results will be higher than August’s.
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Sorry for the delay in posting worldsteel figures for crude steel production by country in July, but here they are. Overall steel production was up 4% in July, led by a record-breaking performance in China. Global production is down year to date by about 20% versus last year, but down only 11% July 2009 compared to July, 2008. The data, along with all the monthly data for 2008, 2007 and 2006, are included in the Nerds of Steel spreadsheet below:
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