EUROMETAL Meeting Nordics debated Steel Supply Chains and Digital Challenges in Nordics and Baltics

EUROMETAL Regional Meeting Nordics was convened in Helsinki on 22-23 of May 2019.

During the morning session, Prof Döhrn (RWI-Leibniz Institute) gave an outlook on global economic perspectives including relevant trends and figures, perspectives of automotive business and consequences of BREXIT.

Colin Richardson (Argus Media) passed interesting messages regarding world steel outlook: demand trends, PMIs, imports and export steel flows between Turkey and EU, global overcapacities in steel.

Alexander Siryk  (Metals Consulting International) outlined the scope of CIS steel supply chains where steel producers are realising excellent EBITDA margins.

Alexander outlined that in this region steel distribution is more oriented in commodities products and that service level is still rather low compared to EU.

Steel trade cases and safeguards measures in EU were explained in full detail by Xiaoyi Tang from Dentons Office in Brussels. 

Nora Härme (Capacent) outlined very important aspects regarding “Pricing for Value – the ultimate challenge in digital times”.

XOM Materials is a digital platform opened to all vendors and buyers of steel, metals and other materials. Tim Milde explained the current status as well as challenges that XOM Materials is facing in short term developments.

The afternoon session was focused on Nordics and Baltics.

Jukka Palokangas (chief economist Technology Industries of Finland) highlighted the key economic figures of Nordics inside the EU context. He also pointed out the importance of exports for the Nordics industry.

Mikael Nyquist explained the challenges facing Nordic steel distribution, SSC as well as stockholding.

Maxim Lvovskiy (Elme Metall) highlighted the main characteristics of Baltic steelmarket: steel consumption, players, growth perspectives, overcapacity’s in Steel Distribution.

Niko Korte (SSAB Digital Business Development) addressed the digital targets and expectations defined by his company.

A Panel Discussion about Digitalisation was moderated by Daniel Guinabert, EUROMETAL Director General. 

During this panel, a lot of fruitful exchanges on ideas and objectives took place. 

As a matter of fact, the panel highlighted a basic mismatch between digital objectives and expectations of a younger generation of managers and typical traditional effective business principles in Steel industry and Distribution. 

Conclusions and findings of the Meeting were summarised by Fernando Espada, president of EUROMETAL. 

We would like to thank our event sponsors SSAB and MEPS International as well asour event partner XOM Materials and to all speakers for coming to Helsinki and for a set of remarkable and challenging contributions.

EUROMETAL Regional Meeting Nordics in Helsinki was attended by 80 participants.

Next year we plan to convene  EUROMETAL Regional Meeting Nordics + Baltics in the Baltic region.