US steel imports in January 2016 account for a quarter of the market

Based on the latest report from the Department of Commerce and Data Analysis (SIMA), import approvals obtained in January 2016 amounted to 2.696 million tonnes. This is a 2 percent increase from the 2.638 million tonnes of permits recorded in December last year, and an increase of 16 percent over the total imports of 2.323 million tonnes in December 2015.

Permitted tonnage importf of finished rolled products in January amounted to 2.093 million tons, which is 4 less than the total number of preliminary imports of 2.017 million tons in December. According to estimates, the share of imports of finished rolled products on the market in January was 25 percent.

A large increase in permits for steel imports in January compared to December 2015 had rails (up 460 percent), products for the oil industry (up 91 percent), reinforcing bars (up 74 percent), standard pipes (up 68 percent), pipes (up to 45 percent), cold-rolled strips (up to 24 percent), structural pipes and pipeline products (up to 19 percent), wire (up to 11 percent) and coiled steel (up to 11 percent).

In January, the largest applications for the import of finished rolled products received permits for such maritime countries: Turkey (262,000 tons, an increase of 56 percent compared with preliminary data in December), South Korea (259,000 tons, an increase of 10 percent), Japan (216,000 tons) , up 50 percent), Germany (125,000 tonnes, up 3 percent) and Brazil (89,000 tonnes, up 30 percent).