The second SteelOrbis Market Talks Meeting in the current year has been held in the southern Turkish city of Iskenderun. Speaking at the meeting, Mehmet Zeren, general secretary of Turkey's Steel Pipe Manufacturers Association (ÇEBİD), summarized the main data for the Turkish steel pipe industry in the first nine months this year.
Accordingly, in the January-September period of the current year Turkey’s welded steel pipe exports increased by 0.7 percent year on year to 1.38 million mt, Turkey’s welded steel pipe imports rose by 49.01 percent year on year to 128.241 million mt. Regarding the antidumping (AD) duty investigation initiated by Turkey against imports of hot rolled sheet (HRS), which is the raw material for steel pipe production, Mr. Zeren stated that it is not realistic to claim that the mentioned product has been dumped into Turkey by all the seven countries under investigation.
Mr. Zeren also stated that one of the priorities of local pipe producers is to obtain supplies from the domestic market. “The Turkish flat steel industry’s production is based on scrap and it is not competitive because scrap prices have not decreased much recently compared to iron ore prices. Especially this year, Turkish steelmakers started to produce steel from slab instead of scrap and then they began to be competitive. We certainly prefer to buy hot rolled sheet from the domestic market, since it has the advantage of proximity and so we can obtain the goods faster, and also we do not have to deal with import procedures. If domestic hot rolled sheet becomes more competitive, then we will always prefer to buy material from the domestic market,” said Mr. Zeren.