Global Steel demand likely to hit 1.501 billion tons in 2016: worldsteel

UNITED KINGDOM October 12 2016 3:28 PM

LONDON (Scrap Register): Global steel demand is expected to grow by 0.2% year-on-year to 1.501 billion tons this year and next year demand will grow by 0.5 % to 1.51 billion tons, the World Steel Association told its conference in Dubai.

In its April forecast, the worldsteel said global steel use would fall by 0.8 % in 2016 to 1.488 billion tons. A better outlook for demand in China and Russia had lifted its forecasts.

The shrink in Chinese demand has now been forecast at only one percent. Chinese demand had been forecast in April to fall by 4 % this year but worldsteel said that Chinese demand would fall by only 1 % to 665.6 million tons and by 2 % in 2017 to 652.3 million tons.

China produces and consumes about half the world's steel. It imports some two thirds of the world's seaborn iron ore.

Russia had also performed better than expected, contributing to the revision of the forecast.

worldsteel forecast demand would fall by 1.6 % this year to 49.6 million tons in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet Union countries, and would grow by 2.1 % to 50.7 million tons year on year in 2017.