Posted on 03 Jun 2015
Most carbon steel products exported from China are, no longer, considered to be significantly inferior to local material for the majority of applications. The delivered price for Chinese material is becoming a key reference figure when negotiating new deals in many parts of the world. This is particularly true in Asian countries.
The initiative, when negotiating steel prices, is being wrested from the local/regional steelmakers. Now in western countries, the price of Chinese imports often forms part of price discussions for domestic supply. This should not be surprising when total annual steel exports of finished steel products from China, have risen by almost 65 million tonnes in the past five years – up from 17.2 million tonnes in 2009 to 81.8 million tonnes in 2014.
A significant proportion of this extra material has been scheduled for supply to Asian destinations. However, in many parts of that region, Chinese imported material is an ever present threat to the profitability of the local steel producers.
To illustrate this point, in the five years between 2009 and 2014, China’s total steel exports of finished steel products have grown from 3.2 to 10.2 percent of production, over the period. The growth in Chinese steel exports, as a proportion of apparent steel consumption, was even more dramatic – rising from 3.2 to 11.1 percent in the same time span.
