German stockholders report higher sales/stocks

Germany’s stockholding distributors sold 7.72 million tonnes of steel products over January to September 2018, an increase of 1.8% over the first nine months of 2017, Kallanish learns from their federation BDS.

Sales volumes were relatively low in September at 905,000t. This compares with the “… extraordinarily busy” summer months of June and July, in both of which slightly more than 1mt were sold, reports BDS chief economics Jörg Feger in the federation’s Stahlreport. In between, August was slightly down on the corresponding 2017 month, but still achieved a “… decent tonnage” of 950,000t.

Sales of pipes in the first nine months also showed a year-on-year increase, he writes, without giving detailed figures.

Inventories in September totalled 2.53mt, a strong 14% above that in September 2017. This is in line with comments gathered earlier by Kallanish from the market, with sales of coated sheet and strip having slowed due to faltering production at German carmakers.