Germany’s stockholding distributors sold 2.47 million tonnes of steel in the first quarter, Kallanish learns from distributors’ federation BDS figures.
The tonnage comes close to that of the corresponding 2024 quarter, with a gain of some 4,000 tonnes. This, however, does not compensate for the steeper year-on-year drop seen last year. In the first quarter of 2024, the tonnage dropped around 5’%, compared with Q1 2023.
Still, this year’s Q1 shows some noteworthy deviations in the product groups. Flat products, which make up roughly 60% of sales among Germany’s stockholders, saw a decline by 30,000t to 1.535mt this year.
BDS does not provide explanations for such changes, which may not be caused by any particular factor. While February’s tonnage was down 40,000t y-o-y, March sales were up by the same rate.
Long products, traditionally accounting for some 30% of the total, saw an increase, by a modest 5,000t y-o-y.
A more noteworthy increase occurred in the “other products” category, which gained 30,000t, to a total of 235,000t. The growth hints at increasing volumes of wire rod, a traditionally uncommon product in warehouses of stockholding distributors.
Christian Koehl Germany
