Global stainless steel (SS) consumption is forecast to jump by 11pc in 2021, said Markus Moll, Managing Director of SMR Gmbh, Austria, in a webinar by BIR recently.
He added that global SS market share for 300 series is set to rise 5pc by 2023, “That this means nickel will win and scrap will win,” said he. In 2020, global SS consumption would be under 4pc, cushioned by China’s 3pc growth — China being the largest consumer of SS with more than 21mn mt consumed annually.
For Europe and US, consumption is projected to fall by 13pc in 2020 but is set to rise in 2021 by 16pc and 19pc, respectively. Consumption in Asian countries (except China) in 2020 would decline by 12pc and rise by 22pc in 2021.
In 2019, global trade of SS scrap, excluding revert, totalled 9.8mn mt with Europe’s share of imports at more than 250,000mt from Russia or CIS countries – an increase of 10pc from 2018, said Moll. Europe shipped around 600,000mt of SS scrap to India, up 7pc from the prior year. He added that Indian producer Jindal Stainless is committed to reducing imports of raw material from 65pc to 35pc by 2021. Its current reliance on import stands at 45pc.
SS scrap in China was 3mn mt a year, growing at 10pc per annum, which would be consumed by domestic mills entirely, said Moll.
China and Indonesia’s share in global SS production would continue to climb more than 70pc in 2021, noted Moll, but it will become flat in the subsequent years, notably because of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measure adopted by several countries.
US stainless steel scrap export market’s January-July shipments in 2020 was 28pc lower from the prior year. Weaker demand from countries like Taiwan, India and Canada hurt US stainless steel scrap shipments, said Dough Kramer of Spectrum Alloys in the webinar.
Vegas Yang of HSKU Raw Material said that there is demand for stainless steel scrap in India and China. In Middle East there is major growth potential for SS cable ties market, said Omar Al Sharif of Sharif Metals International.