South Korea’s H-section steel imports up 12 percent in 2011

In 2011, South Korea's H-section steel imports totaled 793,024 mt, up 12 percent year on year, as announced by the Korea Iron and Steel Association (KISA). South Korea's H-section imports had hit an all-time record volume of 1.012 million mt in 2007. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, the respective import volumes totaled 841,000 mt, 515,000 mt and 700,000 mt.
 
Despite the sluggishness in South Korea's construction sector in 2011, the country's H-section import volume continued to increase on the back of demand from large construction enterprises and from the household appliance sector, and also supported by the government's focus on power generation. Most of the H-section imports which arrived in South Korea in 2011 were small boron-added H-sections from China. H-section imports from China in the given year totaled 644,601 mt, accounting for 81 percent of the total H-section import volume.