Turkey's steel billet imports grow 33 percent in Jan-Aug

In August this year Turkey's billet and bloom import volume increased by 6.82 percent year on year to 206,090 metric tons, down 22.4 percent compared to the previous month, according to the data provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK).  Value of this import volume totaled $110.73 million, down 2 percent year on year and decreasing by 23.8 percent compared to the previous month.

Meanwhile, in the January-August period of this year, Turkey imported 1,978,512 mt of billet and bloom, 33 percent higher than the same period of previous year and value of this import volume amounted to $1.1 billion, increasing 11.1 percent.

In August this year, Turkey imported 99,575 mt of billet and bloom from Russia, 23.4 percent higher than the import volume of the previous month and 87.2 percent higher than compared to the August 2012. Thus, for the first time this year the country took the first rank among Turkey's major billet and bloom import sources, ahead of Ukraine. Despite this increase, in the first eight months of this year Ukraine's billet and bloom exports to Turkey increased by 44.4 percent year on year, amounting to 1.06 million mt and the country maintained the first rank in given period.

Turkey's main billet and bloom sources on country basis in the first eight months of this year are presented below:

Turkey's top 10 billet and bloom import sources in January-August 2013 are as follows: