Despite a threat of oversupply hanging over the European steel
sector in 2015 amid high imports, the Regulatory Authorities are still too slow
to implement necessary measures to defend the market. Despite being more active
in 2014-2015, the European Commission (EC) keeps ignoring the steel segments
that are most hurt by imports, paying attention mostly to the narrower
segments. The absence of trade defence instruments remains one of the main
obstacles for the recovery of the EU steel sector.
The GDP growth of EU-28 is anticipated at 1.9 % in 2016. As a
result, the apparent steel consumption in Europe is expected to grow by 2% in
2016 after a 1.5% rise in 2015, according to Eurofer. Meanwhile, the EU steel
mills will hardly benefit from this growth due to imports invasion, especially
in the flat steel sector, where the consumption growth in 2015 was being
“eaten” by imports. “Steel demand in the EU is growing year after year but this
allocation of extra volume is mainly going to import. European steel producers
are not picking a big part of this growth,” Robrecht Himpe, President of
Eurofer, said in an interview to Metal Expert.
Plate and HRC segments are the most affected by growing imports.
The total volume of plates delivered to the EU from non-European suppliers grew
by 32% to 2.156 million t in January-October of 2015, of which 55% was the
share of Chinese products (1.189 million t or 119,000 t per month on average),
according to the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) statistics. The share of
Ukrainian suppliers reached 23.5% (507,000 t), of Russian 9.4% (203,000 t).
Total HRC imports from non-EU countries in January-October of 2015
inched up by 9% to 5.5 million t. Chinese coils imports to Europe have been
increasingly stronger, with HRC deliveries topping 600,000 t in 2014 (twice as
much as in 2013) and 900,000 t during the first ten months of 2015, according
to Metal Expert data.
An absence of any barriers for HRC and plate imports, combined
with permanently falling prices for raw materials and semi-finished products in
the international market, resulted in significant price drops for both HRC and
plate over the year. Prices for plates in Italy, Germany, Czech Republic and
Poland have fallen by EUR 120-140/t depending on region, according to Metal Expert
data. Prices for domestic HRC in the EU have lost EUR 100-110/t over
January-December 2015. “Demand was better this year. The main problem was
oversupply caused by uncontrolled growth of imports. Local mills in such
conditions will have no choice but to cut capacities in the near future,” a
major German HRC producer commented. “Too high stocks and low prices of
imported steel bring to the knees participants of the market chain. AD
investigation might become a saving boat, but so far [there are] no actions,” a
German trader added.
At the same time, there were only some defence activities last
year, which might help the EU steel industry cope with unfair competition. The
most important step was the AD investigation against of CRC imports from China
and Russia started on May 14. “We have not ordered Chinese and Russian CRC
starting from January delivery because of antidumping investigation,” a German
service centre said. “Imports of CRC are coming now from Brazil and South Korea
mainly as buyers have stopped booking Chinese and Russian CRC being sure that
antidumping will be in force in early 2016,” an international trading company
confirmed.
Moreover, starting from December 19, all CRC shipments from China
and Russia were made subject to registration, which will last till the second
half of 2016. Registration allows the EU to impose duties on the previous
transactions. The same decision was made regarding the high fatigue performance
reinforced bars originating from China.
In mid-October, the EC prolonged the antidumping duty of 7.9-24%
against wire rod originating from China imposed in 2009.
All other EC measures are related to specific narrow segments,
such as grain-oriented electrical steel, stainless steel cold-rolled flat
products, tubes and pipes of ductile cast iron, steel ropes and cables etc.
Unlike in the USA, where the authorities immediately close any
market if there is at least a little threat of dumping, the EC continues to
defend only small segments, while strategically important ones remain being
hurt by growing imports as the trade cases take too long in the EU. “Europe
needs to rapidly modernize its trade defence instruments. Presently, it can
take a year and a half from complaint to definitive antidumping measure. This
is too slow,” Robrecht Himpe said. Market participants believe that in 2016
more measures will be implemented, including, first of all, an antidumping duty
against plates originating from China and Ukraine.
Source: metalexpert