Rebuilding China - A Timely Help for the World?

With the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic hitting the steel industry, a faster-than-expected recovery in China is helping many steel companies around the world. Surprisingly, many steel companies like to increase production for export to China.

China's imports of finished steel fell from 13.1 million tonnes in 2018 to 12.2 million tonnes in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, since September 2019, China's steel imports have grown to over a million tonnes per month, and in the second half of 2020, imports have grown to over 2 million tonnes per month. cheaper than local products.

Most of the regions in China that imported most of the steel come from the provinces of the east coast. One of the main reasons for the significant increase in China's steel imports is China's rapid recovery from the pandemic. Meanwhile, logistical constraints during the blockage that impeded the movement of goods and thus led to the need for imports when recovery takes place.

China's imports of semi-finished steel products grew sharply sixfold from 3 million tonnes in 2019 to 18.3 million tonnes in 2020. Imports from Russia amounted to 3.16 million tons, followed by imports from Vietnam (3 million tons), India (2.99 million tons). ), Indonesia (1.76 million tonnes) and Malaysia (850,199 tonnes).

Long products imports showed significant three-digit growth over the year. Imports of long products rose from 470,900 tonnes in 2019 to 1.6 million tonnes in 2020. Malaysia became the largest source of long products imports to China, with 1.16 million tonnes in 2020 (70% of total bar imports), an increase of 1,700 tonnes in 2019.

Wire rod imports to China rose from 586,784 tonnes in 2019 to 1.46 million tonnes in 2020. The largest source of wire rod imports in 2020 was Malaysia at 677,144 tonnes, accounting for nearly half of the country's total wire rod imports. Other sources of imports were Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, respectively.

Section imports to China are up double-digit growth of 16% YoY to 224,037 tonnes in 2020. Almost half of the imports came from Japan, followed by Turkey (30,677 tons) and Germany (15,723 tons).

China's imports of flat products remained significant in 2020. Hot rolled steel imports rose 35.7% year-on-year to 2.5 million tonnes in 2020. Japan remained the largest source of imports (40% of total imports of flat products in 2020), followed by imports from South Korea. (32% of total sheet metal imports). Indonesia became the third largest source of imports, with 455,759 tonnes in 2020, up from 19,973 tonnes in 2019.

Import of hot rolled