In its latest Short Range Outlook (SRO), published yesterday, Worldsteel revised its steel demand growth forecast for 2020 upwards. The revision raised estimated demand growth between 2019 and 2020 from -6.4% in its June 2020 SRO to -2.4% in yesterday figures. Steel demand is expected to increase by 4.1% between 2020 and 2021.
China accounted for 51% of world steel demand in 2019 and is expected to account for 57% in 2020 and 55% in 2021. Chinese steel demand is forecast to rise by 8.0% in 2020 and 0% in 2021.
After a 1.4% decline in 2019, steel demand outside of China is expected to fall by 13.3% in 2020 and rise by 9.4% in 2021. Check out the downloadable spreadsheet below to see all the newest forecasts.
Freshly rolled steel in the hot rolling mill at POSCO Pohang Steelworks from Worldsteel Image Library by worldsteel / Seong Joon Cho
Looking to chart the share prices of steel companies worldwide to compare how they have performed over the last upturns and downturns? This week’s Steel Data Room’s dataset of the week, Stock Prices for Publicly Traded Global Steel Companies, has daily data from January 2010 to the present, all sourced from Investing.com.
You can look up over 500 publicly-listed companies in the steel industry, alphabetically from Acerinox to Zwahlen & Mayr, and you can sort by country or stock exchange. Finally, the dataset doesn’t just have close/open/high/low prices, but also percent price change and trading volumes.
Based on reported import licenses, US flat steel products imports fell 22% from 622,000 short tons in September 2019 to 482,000 tons last month. Hot rolled imports declined by the largest volume, down 25% on last September due mainly to lower volumes from Canada. Cold rolled imports dropped by the second largest volume, down 40% on last September, here mainly due to lower volumes from Canada, Australia, and Mexico.
Based on January to August imports and September import licenses, US flat products imports in the first nine months of 2020 were 21% lower than in the same period last year with cut plate imports -45%, hot rolled -23%, cold rolled -25% and hot dip galvanized -12%.
SIMA US flat products import licenses
January 2014 to September 2020
Short tons
“A closeup of a freight wagon hauled through Cardiff Central railway station by an EWS Class 66 diesel locomotive. The cargo looks to be slab steel, making it most likely to have come from the Port Talbot works. The Millennium Stadium is in the background”. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Chris McKenna (Thryduulf) / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Last week’s dataset of the week highlighted publicly available steel industry data with the World Steel Association Steel Statistical Yearbook dataset. This week’s dataset, EBITDA per ton for select steelmakers, is an example of the wide variety of proprietary data held in the Steel Data Room.
This dataset contains First River calculations of EBITDA per ton of steel shipped for steelmakers who report operating and financial data. It has quarterly and annual data in US dollars per short ton from 2013 to the present, with numbers painstakingly checked to include EBITDA that applies to steel shipments.
Interested in seeing what other proprietary data the Steel Data Room has to offer? Try a free Steel Data Room trial.
Wouldn’t it be great to expertly chart publicly available data from the World Steel Association? In this week’s Steel Data Room dataset of the week, you steelnerds can find all the publicly available data from Worldsteel’s latest Steel Statistical Yearbook, as well historical data from past yearbooks back to 1980. And if you’re looking for other public Worldsteel data, the Steel Data Room has Short Range Outlooks, monthly world crude steel production, and Top steel-producing companies from World Steel in Figures.
Not just Worldsteel. The Steel Data Room’s got publicly available data from a number of country and regional steel associations such as Acero Argentino, JISF, and Eurofer. If you sign up for a free Steel Data Room trial, you’ll be able to easily produce beautiful charts like the one below with Global Production of DRI, where hovering over the bars will allow you to see production by year by country.
Worldsteel reported crude steel production in China at 94.8 million metric tonnes in August, 8.4% higher than in August 2019. Chinese production in the first eight months of 2020 was 3.9% higher than in the same period last year.
Data from the General Administration of Customs show Chinese net finished steel exports (exports minus imports) in August were 1.4 million tonnes, down 64.3% on August 2019. Net exports in the first eight months of 2020 were 34.7% lower than in the same period last year.
China monthly crude steel production
Thousand metric tonnes
Construction site of New Qinghe Railway Station, China, 2019, from Wikimedia Commons by N509FZ / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
