Tentative Recovery in Steel Markets Outside China

摘要

China's extraordinary demand for steelmaking raw materials has been without doubt the main demand development of 2009. In recent months, however, signs of a tentative recovery in steel industries around the rest of the world have emerged, with steel prices moving upwards once again following a prolonged period of decline.rnFor example, according to World Steel Dynamics' Steelbench-marker, the world export price of hot-rolled band has witnessed an increase of around $150/t or 38% from May to $546/t by the beginning of September (see chart above). Of course such price gains have been achieved against a background of savage production cuts from 1h08 levels. These included enormous yr-on-yr output cuts in the 1q09 of 52% in the US, 45% in the EU-27 and 46% in Japan. As a result crude steel production in the world excluding China dropped at an annual rate of 36% in the 1q.