Eurofer trims outlook for 2024 steel consumption
According to Eurofer, approximately 129 million tonnes of steel represented the apparent steel demand of Europe last year. This levels is the same as 2020, when Europe suffered the impact of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a consequence, demand fell by more than 6% y-o-y in 2023, the fourth annual decline recorded during the last five years.
In 2024 apparent steel demand is set to recover by about 5.6%, not enough to return to the volumes achieved in 2022.
The slower-than-expected recovery of apparent consumption is caused by the persistent weakness of real steel demand expected for 2024. This year, real demand should drop 0.4% below 2023, folowing the last year’s y-o-y decline of 3.1%.
“In 2024, conditional on more favourable developments in the industrial outlook and improvement in steel demand, apparent steel consumption is set to recover (+5.6%) albeit at a slower pace than previously forecasted (+7.6%). The overall evolution of steel demand remains subject to very high uncertainty,” Eurofer explains.
Within a framework of weak steel demand, in 2023 the market share of imports out of the total consumption in Europe remained high. Eurofer calculated that in Q3 2023, the share was still 27%, including finished and semi-finished products.
Emanuele Norsa Italy
