Steel consumption is growing in Ukraine amid falling imports
According to Ukrmetallurgprom, in the first half of 2020, the capacity of the Ukrainian rolled metal market amounted to 2,131.7 thousand tons, compared to 2,021.8 thousand tons in the same period in 2019. At the same time, the share of imports in total consumption decreased from 32.7% in January-June 2019 to 24.9% in 6 months of this year. Thus, for 6 months of 2020, there is an increase in the capacity of the domestic market relative to January-June 2019 by 5.5%, with a simultaneous reduction in the share of the import component by 7.8%.
Among metallurgical importers for 6 months of 2020, the CIS ranks first (39.3%), the second is the EU-28 (25.9%), and the third is the countries of Asia (17.7%).
For 6 months of 2020, Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises produced 9,030 thousand tons of rolled metal (95.3% compared to the same period in 2019), of which, according to ETR-Spectr LLC, about 7,430 thousand tons were exported, or 82.3%. In the same period of 2019, the share of exports was about 85.6% (8,110 thousand tons with a total production of 9,470 thousand tons of rolled metal).
The share of semi-finished products in export deliveries for 6 months of 2020 is 49.04%, which is slightly higher than the indicator for the period January-June 2019 (46.99%). The share of flat products in export deliveries for 6 months of 2020 is slightly lower than the indicator for the same period in 2019 (32.88% and 33.24%, respectively). The same picture is observed in relation to long products - 18.08% in 6 months of 2020 against 19.78% in 6 months of 2019.