The Ukrainian market of hot-dip galvanized coils shrank by 8%

According to the website of the Ukrainian Steel Construction Center, the results of the first quarter of 2019 showed that consumption of hot-dip galvanized products decreased by 8% compared to the same period of 2018, and amounted to 59 thousand tons. Within that period, imports fell by 3%, while exports increased by 10% with relatively neutral trends in production — an increase of 400 tons.

According to the results of the first quarter, the share of domestic hot-dip galvanized products was 55% of the market capacity. The share of Chinese imports averaged 9%.  The rest was imported mostly from the EU — 13%, Russia — 8%, and Turkey — 15%.

Hot-dip galvanized coils with a coating thickness of 140–180 gram/square meter account for the lion’s share, or 75%, of consumption of hot-dip galvanized products. 30% of these products were imported from Russia. The share of hot-dip galvanized coils of a coating thickness of less than 60 gram/square meter was 8% of the overall consumption volume.

Ukrainian and Chinese producers of hot-dip galvanized products continued their price competition: a difference in prices in the first quarter averaged $270 for a steel sheet 0.5 mm thick.  The quality of Chinese products is still worse than Ukrainian and European ones.

Consumption of polymer-coated sheets reduced in the first quarter by 21%, down to 47 thousand tons, mainly due to a decline in domestic production by 62%, or 2 thousand tons, and a fall in imports by 17%, or 45 thousand tons. The import fall resulted from the response of the key players to the market saturation and overloaded warehouses in the second half of 2018.

According to the results of the first quarter, domestic production of polymer-coated sheets made up around 5% of the total market volume. China’s share in total imports of such products was 44%, while that of the EU was 46%.

As reported earlier, the Ukrainian market for hot-dip galvanized coils increased by 4.3% in 2018 compared to the previous year, or up to 314 thousand tons. In 2019, according to forecasts of market players, consumption of hot-dip galvanized coils in Ukraine may grow by another 5%. This is twice as high as the trend in the global market of hot-dip galvanized products.