EU distributors see lower first-half shipments

European distributors saw shipments decrease during the first six months of the year, EUROMETAL explains in a release sent to Kallanish.

Flat steel service centre shipments moved down -2% year-on-year in January-June, while multi-products distributors saw shipments increase a mere 0.1% y-o-y.

June was particularly slow for flat service centres as their shipments dropped over -5% y-o-y. After quite some destocking the level of stocks at flat service centres was calculated to be equal to 69 days of shipments, equal to the level reached at the end of June 2017.