Situation on the metallurgical market of Ukraine

At the end of 2018, Ukraine ranked 13th among steel producers and 10th among global producers of cast iron and. This indicates that the Ukrainian mining and metallurgical complex is still one of the leading sectors of the domestic economy. In addition, according to the calculations of the World Steel Association Worldsteel, one job in the metallurgy creates an additional 7.1 jobs in other industries. That is, 130 thousand workers employed in the domestic metallurgy guarantee about one million more jobs.

According to experts, today metallurgists are hindered by the loss of a part of factories and mines in Donbass to return to pre-war production volumes. These are coke plants, in particular, Makeevsky and Yasinovsky, Khartsyzsky pipe, metallurgical plants in Alchevsk, Donetsk, Yenakiyevo and Makeyevka. worst of all, with the beginning of the Russian aggression, Ukrainian metallurgy enterprises lost their usual sales markets, reducing production by 15%. Today, we have to look for new ones in the European Union and overseas. And the European consumer, as a rule, is more demanding, wants quality goods at a lower price.

Despite the loss of metallurgical capacities in the occupied territory of Donbass (which is more than 3.3 million tons of steel per year), the Ukrainian mining and metallurgical complex last year as a whole remained at the level of 2017, and even surpass it in some indicators. So, for 12 months of 2018, Ukrainian metallurgists produced 20.6 million tons of pig iron, (102% relative to the same period in 2017, taking into account the activities in January-February 2017 of enterprises in the temporarily uncontrolled territory of Ukraine, or 104% excluding them), 20.1 million tons of steel (98.5% and 100.3%, respectively), 18.36 million tons of rolled products (100.2% and 103%). Thanks to these results, the share in total foreign exchange earnings in 2018 is 30.7%, which exceeds the figure for 2017 (28.4%), and the “metallurgical” share in GDP is more than 15%.

Ukraine is traditionally considered a net metallurgical exporter. In particular, in the past, we exported 78.5% of the volume of manufactured metal products. At the same time, unfortunately, the structure of exports, as before, was dominated by products with relatively low added value - semi-finished products, whose share in 2018 amounted to 43% of total exports of metal products (at the level of 2017). Therefore, it is clear that the stability of the Ukrainian metallurgical industry, first of all, depends both on the situation in the global steel market and on the quality and competitiveness of its products. And it was 2018 that became the year of testing for Ukrainian metallurgists.

The introduction by the US administration in March 2018 of an import duty on metal products regardless of the country of origin and export caused a chain reaction of protectionist measures in the form of protective investigations against and