According to the November 2022 crude steel production report of the Turkish Steel Producers Association, world crude steel production was 139 million 147 thousand tons in November 2022, with a decrease of 2.6% compared to the previous year. In the eleven-month period, the decrease was 3.7%.
Turkish crude steel production decreased in November
Turkey produced 2 million 384 thousand tons of crude steel in November with a decrease of 30.7% compared to the same month of the previous year and ranked 10th after Iran, Germany and Brazil. Eleven-month production decline was 12.3%. Turkey produced 8.6 points lower than the world production in the 11-month period.
In the eleven months of 2022, production of flat products decreased by 6,4% to 12.6 million tons, and consumption decreased by 2% to 15,9 million tons. There was a decrease of 11.8% in the production of long products and 6.8% in consumption.
In the eleven-month period of 2022, Turkey's exports of steel products decreased by 19.9% on a quantity basis. There was a decrease of 23.9% in flat products, 17% in long products and 27.1% in semi-finished products.
Turkey's imports of steel products decreased by 4% on quantity basis
In the eleven-month period of 2022, Turkey's imports of steel products decreased by 4% on quantity basis. Flat products decreased by 10.4%, while long products increased by 0.9% and semi-finished products by 7.8%.
The decline in imports at a lower level than exports was mainly due to the extraordinary increases in flats and semis imports from Brazil, Netherlands, England, China and South Korea . The ratio of exports to imports, which was 113.91% in the first eleven months of 2021, decreased to 92.17% in 2022.
While the share of imports in steel products consumption was 30.6%, the share of imports in flat product consumption reached 49.2%. The share of imports made within the scope of DIR in the imports realized was 97.3% in semi products and 52.3% in flat products.
Differences were reported in scrap imports by region
The largest share in our scrap imports, which decreased by 6.7% in the eleven-month period of 2022, was from the EU, which decreased by 9.7% compared to the same period of the previous year. During this period, Turkey realized 53.4% of its scrap imports from the EU. While there was a decrease in scrap imports from EU, UK, CIS and North Africa regions, an increase was observed in scrap imports from other regions, especially the Middle East, Gulf and Latin America.
The increase in electricity and natural gas prices weakened the competitiveness of the steel industry in domestic and foreign markets.
The negative effects of the 50% hike in electricity energy and natural gas prices on September 1 weakened the competitiveness of our steel industry in domestic and foreign markets. State-supported and dumped imports from the Far East and Gulf countries, produced with cheap energy, decreased by 19.1% in production and 26.7% in exports in the third quarter, while production decreased by 30.7% and exports by 40.4% in November. In order to prevent the further deepening of the decline in production and exports, which have reached devastating levels in the sector, it is vital to reduce energy input costs to more reasonable levels and to prevent state-sponsored dumped imports.
