Germany’s stockholding steel distributors sold 4.95 million tonnes of products in the first half of the year, around 130,000t more than in H1 2025, according to distributors’ association Bundesverband Deutscher Stahlhandel (BDS).
While this marks a year-on-year increase, it should be noted that H1 in 2025 and 2024 saw y-on-y falls of around 100,000t, respectively.
The first two quarters of 2026 were broadly similar with 2.495mt sold in Q1, and 2.455mt in Q2, Kallanish learns from BDS. The average sales volume per month was 818,300t.
Split by product group, long products on average accounted for 1.565mt (up from 1.475mt), and flat products for 2.929mt (up from 2.904mt). Miscellaneous other products, such as wire rod, accounted for 472,000t (up from 448,000t)
Distributors sold 848,000t in June, nearly 70,000t more than in June 2025. BDS provides no interpretation of the increase, however, its likely that the base effect of particularly low prior-year sales had some impact. The increase of this year’s sales over last year’s was already seen in the first quarter.
In terms of inventory tonnage, the monthly average was 1.896mt in Q1 and 1.884mt in Q2, both slightly below the prior-year value. Inventories of long products on average in the second quarter were 617,000t, flat products stood at 1.229mt, and miscellaneous products at 38,000t.
This remains below the monthly average inventory of 2mt in 2022. Since early 2023, only three months, July 2023, February 2024 and April 2024 have eclipsed that level.
