Day: 29 July 2020

The low water levels that troubled the German steel industry in the summers of 2018 and 2019 are not expected to re-occur this year.

“The level at Duisburg’s Ruhrort port is at present still regular for the season,” Kallanish is told by German steel federation WV Stahl. From the current point of view, “…extremely low levels in the coming weeks are unlikely,” a WV Stahl spokesman says. But he does not exclude this in the months ahead, “…if precipitation remains low.”

In fact, no industry has so far reported transport bottlenecks on waterways. However, rain has been sparse for months and agricultural federations in North Rhine Westphalia have already warned of damages to the harvest.

Last year, some problems did occur along the Rhine, Ruhr and Saar Rivers, but the impact was nowhere near as dramatic as in the summer of 2018. That year prompted industries and politicians to come up with an “Inland Waterway Transport Masterplan,” which was revealed by the Ministry of Transport in May 2019.

That plan was welcomed by WV Stahl president Hans Jürgen Kerkhoff. He noted then that “…the exceptional low water in 2018 has shown to what degree the industry depends on the waterways.” According to WV Stahl, one fifth of German steel transport is carried out on the domestic waterways.

Russia is on track to once again becoming the largest supplier of hot rolled coil into the EU this year, according to data published by Eurofer.

Until 2016 the country was often the EU’s largest supplier of HRC, but then the imposition of anti-dumping duties on Russian steel forced volumes to drop significantly. So far in 2020, the country is on track to sell to Europe almost 2 million tonnes of HRC, according to annualised calculations made by Eurofer using data from the first five months of the year. If this volume is reached, Russia would also surpass its record annual tonnage of supply to the EU of above 1.8mt in 2016.

In January-May Russia supplied to the EU over 800,000t of HRC, up over 35% year-on-year, with over 230,000t sold in May alone, according to Eurofer data. Due to the existence of high duties on most Russian suppliers, it is understood most volumes were sold by Severstal, the company with the lowest AD duty, Kallanish notes.

Eurofer indicates Russia will be the only major HRC supplier to the EU in 2020 to see its volumes increase compared to 2019. The other top suppliers, Turkey and India, are likely to be surpassed by Russia and see their volumes drastically reduced due to the coronavirus outbreak and new changes in safeguard measures.

New EU safeguard quotas became effective since 1 July, and Russia was also the sole HRC supplier to see its dedicated quota increase enough to allow a recovery in sales compared with 2019. Turkey and India, on the other hand, suffered a cut in available quotas due to the decision to allocate them on a country specific and quarterly basis.