Rolled steel market in Ukraine increased by 92.5% y/y in January-August

The capacity of the domestic market for 8 months was 2.32 million tons

In January-August 2023, Ukrainian enterprises increased the consumption of rolled steel by 92.5% compared to the same period in 2022 – up to 2.322 million tons. This is evidenced by Ukrmetalurgprom’s data.

For 8 months, 706.34 thousand tons of rolled steel were imported into Ukraine, which is 30.43% of the domestic market of rolled steel consumption. The share of the imported component in the domestic consumption of steel products increased by 3.51% y/y.

The import structure is characterized by a significant dominance of flat rolled products over graded products – 75.41% and 24.50%, respectively. In the same period of 2022, the dominance of flat rolled products over graded products was slightly lower, but also noticeable – 59.04% and 39.27%, respectively.

In general, in January-August 2023, Ukrainian steelmakers produced 3.41 million tons of rolled steel (-23.9% y/y). 1.79 million tons of products were shipped for export, and 1.62 million tons were shipped to the domestic market. The share of exports in the total volume of produced products was 52.6%, while for the same period in 2022 it was 80.3%.

The share of semi-finished products in export deliveries for 8 months is 43.6%, which corresponds to the indicator of 2022 (44.2%). The specific weight of flat rolled products in export deliveries for 8 months decreased to 34.9% against 38.2% a year earlier. The share of rolled products in export deliveries increased significantly – up to 21.5% from 17.6%.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in August 2023, Ukrainian steelmakers cut down rolled steel production by 3.6% compared to the previous month – to 506,000 tons. Pig iron smelting decreased by 0.7% m/m – to 534 thousand tons, and steel production increased by 0.2% m/m – to 602 thousand tons.