Turkish steelmakers increased slab imports significantly in the first six months of this year, considering market conditions and their requirements for flat product output.
Turkey’s slab import reached 1.10mn mt in January-June 2020 versus 550,000mt in the same period of 2019, according to Turkish statistical source SteelData. Russia raised shipments by 8pc to 527,000mt, while Ukraine increased it nine times over to 261,000mt.
It should be noted that this year Turkey imported 212,000mt of slabs from Brazil and 51,000mt of semis from the UK, while last year there was no supply from these two countries.
The Netherlands was the fifth-largest slab supplier to Turkey in H1 2020. The European nation raised its shipments by 32pc to 42,000mt.