Ukraine steel industry remains export driven, consumption slows

Ukraine exported more steel products in the first ten months of the year than a year ago, as domestic consumption decreased alongside the output growth. So says national metals association Ukrmetallurgprom citing the national statistics service.

The country’s steelmakers produced 15.54 million tonnes of saleable steel products in January-October, 1.2% more than in the corresponding period of 2018. They exported 12.92mt, 5.3% more than in the corresponding period of last year.

Ten-month exports of slab and billet totalled 6.1mt, up 13.9% on-year, and amounted to 47% of total exports. Flat products exports notched up a fraction to 4.3mt and amounted to 33.5% of the total, while longs exports fell -4.1% on-year to 2.53mt and amounted to 19.5% of the total.

The EU remains Ukraine’s main export market, with a 34% share, followed by Africa at 17.7% and the Middle East at 11.1%. A total of 83% of Ukraine’s saleable steel products output was exported in the first ten months of the year, up 3.4 percentage points on-year, Kallanish notes.

But Ukraine’s domestic shipments decreased by -15.2% on-year in the same period to 2.62mt, amid the country’s industrial output falling -5% in October and -0.6% in the first ten months.

Consumption of steel products in the country declined by -10.9% on-year in January-October to 3.83mt, 1.22mt of which was imported, flat on-year. The share of imports in Ukrainian consumption increased, however, by 3.5pp to 31.5%. Ten-month imports consisted of 488,400t of longs, 692,000t of flats and 36,400t of semi-finished products. This amounted to a 40.1%, 56.9% and 17% share of total imports respectively.