First River’s Steel Data Room has “tonnes” of data if you are looking for information on steelmaking raw materials. This week’s Nerds post focuses on two Steel Data Room datasets with world annual minerals production, consumption and trade data.
“Met Coal and Iron Ore Consumption, Trade, and Prices” has data from the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science. It includes world and Australian annual production/consumption/trade of iron ore and metallurgical coal by quality, in many cases from 1990.
“World Mineral Production from 1970” has data from the British Geological Survey. It includes country-specific annual production of minerals, cement, and ferro-alloys, but most importantly for steelmakers, iron ore, coal and zinc.
In the Steel Data Room, you can easily create charts to export into your presentations which combine data from different sources. The chart below shows world iron ore production from the Australian Government’s Department of Industry together with the iron ore production by country from the British Geological Survey. The chart automatically updates when the new data is published (the 2020 production data by country will be available in spring, 2022).
Interested in taking a closer look at what’s available in the Steel Data Room? Try a free trial.
Worldsteel reported crude steel production in China at 83.2 million metric tonnes in August, 13.2% lower than in August, 2020. Chinese crude steel production in the first eight months of 2020 was 3.9% higher than in the same period last year.
Data from China’s General Administration of Customs show net finished steel exports (exports minus imports) in August at 4.0 million tonnes, 178% higher than in August, 2020. Net finished steel exports in the first eight months of 2021 were 59% higher than in the first eight months of 2020.
China produced 83.2 million tonnes in August, accounting for 53% of world output and dropping 13.2% on August, 2020. In other parts of Asia, Japanese production rose 22.9% year-on-year, Indian production increased 8.2%, and South Korean output rose 6.2%.
European Union 27 crude steel production increased 27.1% on last August following a 6.7% increase in Germany (and a 44.6% increase in the European Union’s second largest producer, Italy, based on Federacciai data published by SteelOrbis). North American production rose 24.4% with US output up 26.8%. Other significant changes compared to last August include higher production in Brazil (+14.1%) and Russia (+4.4%).
Based on reported import licenses, US long products imports increased 32% from 195,000 short tons in August, 2020 to 256,000 tons in August, 2021. Licenses indicate that the rise was mainly due to higher Wire Rod imports from Japan, Mexico and Korea. Parallel Flange Sections imports also rose significantly from a number of countries including South Korea, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.
US long products imports in the first eight months of 2021 were 22% higher than in the same period last year with the largest volumes rising for Wire Rod (+44%), Light Shapes (+71%) and Parallel Flange Sections (+32%).
US long products import licenses
January 2015 to August 2021
Short tons
Construction of the new headquarters of the MEL (European Metropolis of Lille, France) May 2019 by Lamiot, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Our steel industry readers will probably be interested to know that Midrex just published its 2020 World Direct Reduction Statistics report. World DRI production reached 104.4 million metric tonnes in 2020, a 3.4% decline from 2019 levels.
The First River Steel Data Room has already uploaded the report’s DRI production and shipments data by product type, production process, country, region and shipment method. The chart below illustrates how the Middle East and Asia continue to dominate world production, accounting for 81% of 2020 world production combined.
If you are looking to see more of the detail and create your own easily customizable charts, try a free Steel Data Room trial.
If you are following the European steel industry, you will want easy access to the latest figures published in the European Steel Association (Eurofer) quarterly report “Economic and Steel Market Outlook“. This week’s featured Steel Data Room dataset stores all the data from the August, 2021 Eurofer report, which includes steel industry activity up to and including the first quarter of 2021, as well as steel consumption forecasts to 2022.
The chart below illustrates annual apparent steel consumption in the 27 European Union Countries from 2013 to 2022. Eurofer expects consumption in 2021 to rebound to close to 2019 levels at 143 million metric tonnes and to reach 149 million tonnes in 2022, still lower than 2018’s recent peak of 152 million tonnes.
Interested in taking a look? Try a free Steel Data Room trial. You’ll see how the Data Room automatically updates all the charts you create so there’s no need search for the newest report and revise the data.
