The Turkish Steel Producers Association (TÇÜD) announced the data for the crude steel production, consumption and foreign trade for January. In January 2024, finished product consumption increased by 19.5% compared to the same month of 2023 and reached 3.5 million tons.
Flat product exports increased by 89.1%
In January 2024, compared to the same month of 2023, exports of steel products increased by 23.0% to 894.7 thousand tons in quantity and by 10.1% to 662.1 million dollars in terms of value.
Analyzing the sub-items of exports, in January 2024, compared to the same period of the previous year, exports increased by 89.1% to 347.8 thousand tons in flat products, by 2.0% to 536.7 thousand tons in long products and by 41.3% to 10.2 thousand tons in semi-finished products.
Imports of steel products increased by 12.4
In January 2024, compared to the same month of 2023, imports of steel products increased by 12.4% y-o-y to 1.4 million tons and decreased by 1.6% y-o-y to 1.1 million $.
Analyzing the sub-items of imports, in January 2024, compared to the same period of the previous year, imports were 735.9 thousand tons with an increase of 8.8% in flat products, 98.8 thousand tons with a decrease of 29.1% in long products and 549.3 thousand tons with an increase of 32.1% in semi-finished products.
The foreign trade deficit in steel products decreased by 16%
In January 2024, compared to the same period of the previous year, the foreign trade deficit in steel products decreased by 16.0% y-o-y, from 490.8 million $ to 412.3 million $. The ratio of exports to imports increased by 6.6 percentage points in January 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year, from 55.1% to 61.6%.
According to data released by the World Steel Association (World Steel) for January 2024, world crude steel production decreased by 1.6% y-o-y to 148.1 million tons.
In January 2024, China's crude steel production decreased by 6.9% to 77.2 million tons compared to the same period last year. In second place, India's crude steel production increased by 7.3% to 12.5 million tons, while Japan's output decreased by 0.6% to 7.3 million tons.
In his statement, Veysel Yayan, Secretary General of TÇÜD, said: "Our crude steel production showed a gradual recovery in the second half of 2023 with the resumption of production activities of our facilities after the earthquake disaster, the decline in energy input costs to reasonable levels and the capacity increase of around 4.5 million tons. Our crude steel production has been increasing on an annual basis since September 2023 and continued its high growth performance by increasing by 24.7% in January 2024, after increasing by 25.4% and 21.2% in November and December 2023, respectively. Thus, Turkey became the country with the highest increase in production among the world's top 10 crude steel producers after Iran in January. With this performance, Turkey surpassed Germany in world steel production while rising to 7th place and becoming the largest steel producer in Europe.
In January 2024, the share of imports in consumption decreased by 2.8 percentage points to 38.4% compared to the same period of the previous year, as the increase in imports of steel products remained at 12.4%, while consumption increased by 19.5%. Turkish steel exports increased by 23.0% to 894.7 million tons in January. Especially in recent years, the acceleration of investments in high-value-added qualified steel products such as stainless steel, armour steel, train wheels and rails was effective in the remarkable 89.1% increase in flat product exports in January. On the other hand, regional conflicts in the Red Sea led to a limited increase of 2.0% in exports of long products.
Entering 2024, the realization of the expectations for a reduction in interest rates in the EU as of the second quarter of 2024 and the revival of EU steel consumption are considered as opportunities for the increase in exports to continue throughout the year. In addition, the possibility that China, which could not grow in the domestic market due to economic problems in 2023, will intensively turn to exports and continue to increase its exports in 2024 with state-supported and dumped prices poses a threat to the world steel industry and our industry."
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