India reduced steel exports by almost 30% in January-July

In January-July 2023, India reduced the volume of exports of steel products by 27.4% compared to the same period in 2022 – to 5.5 million tons. SteelMint informs about it.

At the same time, in July 2023, Indian steel exports increased by 34% m/m – up to 0.79 million tons.

For seven months of 2023, the export of flat products decreased by 13% year-on-year – to 4.51 million tons, billets – by 57%, to 0.63 million tons, the supply of galvanized steel abroad increased by 38% y/y – up to 0.96 million tons, exports in the segment of rolled products fell by 61% – to 0.36 million tons.

In particular, good domestic demand for steel led to a drop in export volumes in this period. In addition, India increased exports of value-added rolled products, reducing shipments of high-end materials. Many large producers have either started their own processing plants or have gone for synergistic acquisitions of stand-alone rolling mills to produce value-added steel. As a result, most mills have had lower HRC volumes to allocate to overseas sales in recent months.

In addition, Indian exports have been affected by a drop in demand in Vietnam, particularly as China has taken a large part of this market. As for exports of semi-finished products, they declined amid an active trading by sellers from Southeast Asia and Turkiye.

China has played a crucial role in the decline in India’s exports due to more attractive offers, SteelMint sums up. At the moment, the expected reductions in production at Chinese steel mills have not yet been officially announced. If this happens, Indian producers will benefit from such a scenario. Conversely, China may continue to export about 7 million tons of steel in the second half of 2023, which will put pressure on both India’s export volumes and product prices.

As GMK Center reported earlier, India in July increased production volumes of rolled products up to 10.53 million tons, which is 8.9% more than in July last year. The combined volume of JSW Steel, JSPL and AMNS India was 2.99 million tonnes, up 17.2% year-on-year. Other major producers included Tata Steel (1.58 million tonnes), SAIL (1.32 million tonnes) and RINL (0.32 million tonnes). At the same time, in this period, the volume of imported rolled goods increased by 21% m/m and by 32.2% y/y – up to 587 thousand tons.