Posted on 16 Aug 2018
The steel industry umbrella association for the UK has highlighted its concerns over a possible ‘No Deal Brexit’ and its potential effects on the country’s steel sector.
The major concerns of the association, UK Steel, revolve around the implications for trade remedies, safeguards, tariffs, rules of origin, customs and research and development. Most of this is quite naturally concerned with trade. The UK steel sector exported 2.3 million tonnes of steel to the EU last year, around 30% of its total production, the association confirms in a briefing note monitored by Kallanish.
Of most concern is how a No-deal Brexit will affect trade remedies, a highly-complex and contentious area at the best of times. “The steel sector has more measures in place than any other sector in the EU, accounting for 31 of the 92 currently in place; 15 of these are relevant to UK producers,” UK Steel says.
The country needs a fully operational new Trade and Remedies Authority and this is due to be in place by 31 December 2020. Under a no-deal scenario it would need to be in place in seven months’ time and UK Steel says that “… there would be major concerns about the possibility of doing this by 29th March of next year.”
The UK steel sector, after showing some signs of progress over January to April, has seen crude steel production flatten year-on-year in the first half of 2018, Kallanish notes.
After having risen above 700,000 tonnes of output in both March and April, the latter of which represented a 30-month high at 758,000t, monthly crude steel production fell back in May and June. UK melters produced only 574,000t in May although this upticked to 681,000t in June.
The overall effect of this was that year-on-year output rose only marginally by 0.01% to 3.876 million tonnes in the first 6 months of 2018 from 3.844mt in the year-before period.
