According to the information received from the Turkish Steel Producers Association (TÇÜD), the steel industry completed last year with a decrease in production and an increase in consumption.
Although there seems to be positive acceleration in crude steel production in recent months, considering the monthly averages, the production, which was 3.36 million tons in 2021 and 2.92 million tons in 2022, remained at the level of 2.8 million tons in 2023.
In December, Türkiye's final product production increased by 16% and consumption increased by 5% compared to the same month of 2022. Final product production was 3.4 million tons and consumption was 3 million tons.
Flat product production increased by 46.7%
In December, flat product production increased by 46.7% to 1.4 million tons, while flat product consumption increased by 19.1% to 1.6 million tons. A 1.6% increase in long product production and a 7.6% decrease in consumption were observed. In the whole of 2023, an increase of 0.1% in final product production and 17.1% in consumption was recorded.
Exports of steel products increased in December
In December 2023, Turkey's exports of steel products increased by 32.6% in terms of quantity. There was an increase of 68.3% in flat products, 21.4% in long products, and a decrease of 48.8% in semi-finished products. The annual decrease was 30.6% in amount.
In December, Türkiye's imports of steel products decreased by 15.3% on quantity basis. There was a decrease of 15.9% in flat products, 13.8% in long products and 14.9% in semi-products.
The 40.6% increase in long product imports in 2023 was mainly due to the 75.5% increase in wire rod imports.
In 2022, the export-import coverage ratio, which was 89.62%, decreased to 56.62% in 2023, as imports were increasing while exports were decreasing.
The share of imports in total steel product consumption was 29.5%. The share of imports in flat product consumption reached 47.7%. The share of imports within the scope of DIR in total imports was 50.1%, and the share of semi-products was 85.8%.
The increase in imports negatively affected the steel industry
TÇÜD Secretary General Veysel Yayan said: The biggest share in our scrap imports, which decreased by 10% in 2023, belonged to the EU, which decreased by 7.6% compared to the previous year. While scrap imports from the USA increased, a decrease was observed in imports from all other regions. "While the decline in exports continues, the increase in imports has negatively affected our steel industry."
Referring to the imports of wire rod, Yayan said, “There was an extraordinary increase in wire rod imports, especially from Egypt, Russia, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Bosnia-Herzegovina and England. Rapidly preventing state-supported, dumped imports, which cause the export-import coverage ratio and capacity utilization rate to decline significantly, reviewing the Inland Processing Regime application and focusing on products that do not have sufficient production capacity in our country, not only for our steel industry but also for achieving the MTP targets. "It is of vital importance," he said.
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