The European association for steel distributors and service centres (SSC), EUROMETAL, confirms to Kallanish that activity at SSC and distributors deteriorated again in October.
According to the latest data release, during the first ten months of 2019 shipments from EU flat steel service centres dropped -3.6% year-on-year. The fall accelerated by 0.2% compared with that registered during the January-September period.
Shipments from multi-products distributors, meanwhile, were down -4.8% y-o-y during the first ten months of the year, compared with a deceleration of -4.1% y-o-y registered during the first nine months.
Stocks at steel service centres were calculated to be of 70 days-worth of sales at the end of October. This was 2 days less than in September 2019 but still high compared with the 65 days registered in October 2018. Multiproduct distributors also reduced their stocks compared with September 2019 and continued to have significantly lower stocks than in the same month of last year.
