Germany’s strongest state for steel production and processing, North Rhine-Westphalia, has lost roughly 20% of its output over the past decade according to the state’s statistics office.
In 2025, the tonnage of crude steel and steel products amounted to 45.8 million tonnes, down by 20.1% from 2015 levels, and also 6.4% below the figure of 2024. The statistics counts crude steel along with semi-finished products, rolled products, and also finished products made by fabricators. The figure of 45.8mt therefore includes multiple instances of double counting along the value chain, the office explains.
The NRW statistics methods differ from those used for the national statistics by association WV Stahl, which clearly differentiates between crude steel, pig iron, and rolled products.
Sources at WV Stahl confirmed to Kallanish that the 20% drop over a ten-year period is plausible.
NRW statistics also reports an average selling value of €786/tonne ($896/t) in 2025, 46.5% higher than in 2015, but 4.7% below the value of 2024.
While these figures are not broken down by product group, they roughly correspond with published prices by Kallanish. In 2015, hot-rolled coil prices in NW Europe dipped under the €400/t mark for most of the year, while 2024 were altogether higher than those in 2025, when an upsurge kicked in only in the second half.
