Cold rolled steel prices in Poland exceeded $ 2,500 per ton
The pandemic caused a very large supply deficit on the Polish steel market, which proved impossible to quickly compensate for supplies from abroad. Prices for some types of rolled metal have doubled this year, which creates a risk for investments previously allocated to the Polish state budget.
The growing gap between supply and demand has caused prices to skyrocket. According to the Polish Union of Steel Distributors, a ton of hot-rolled steel, which cost PLN 2,240 before the pandemic, is now sold at PLN 6,114 (US $ 1,528.5) per ton. The price per tonne of steel bars has increased from PLN 2,730 to PLN 4,270 (USD 1,067.5) this year.
“The largest increase was associated with cold-rolled sheet, because this rolled metal was practically unavailable - all production this year was sold out. Prices have reached PLN 10,000 (USD 2,500 - ed.) Per ton, ”said Iwona Dybal.
In the first half of this year, 822 thousand tons of steel were delivered from Russia to Poland. This is almost 60 percent of all imports from this country last year. In the first half of the year, Ukraine sent more steel to Poland than in the entire last year - 710 thousand tons, compared with 685 thousand tons for the entire previous year, respectively. Belarus has cut supplies to Poland by half - to 141 thousand tons. This is followed by Moldova, India, South Korea and Turkey.
Summing up the results of the first half of the year, Iwona Dybal noted that the “scissors” of supply and demand in Poland are still expanding. As of May this year, the difference between production and consumption is 600,000 tons. This is twice as much as in May last year. If you look at the share of imports in steel consumption, the picture is quite grim: out of 7.7 million tons of steel used in Poland, 6.7 million tons were imported.