The South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute (SEAISI) has commented on possible trade difficulties in the ASEAN region caused by the war in Ukraine. The ASEAN-6 countries are mostly net importers of both semi-finished steel and finished steel products. Russia is one of the major sources of semi-finished steel as well as some of finished steel products, especially flat steel, while imports from Ukraine into the ASEAN region was already low.
According to ASEAN, billet imports in the region dropped 12 percent year on year to nearly 2 million mt in the first 11 months of 2021, with 10 percent of which coming from Russia, while out of total 3 million mt of slab imports in the given period, 20 percent came from Russia. Meanwhile slab imports from Ukraine in the same period was as low as 40,000 mt.
Regarding finished steel, ASEAN’s bar imports from Russian and Ukraine were minimum, while plate imports from Ukraine dropped significantly to 92,059 mt and imports from Russia amounted to 12,000 mt, up 60 percent year on year in the first 11 months. For hot rolled coil, imports from Russia was only 3 percent of the total import volume, while cold rolled imports from Russia and Ukraine were below 100 mt, according to ASEAN. Additionally ASEAN was not importing any coated steel sheet from these two countries.
Taking all these into consideration, ASEAN-6 expects to see a small impact on region's steel trade from the Russia-Ukraine war for a short period of time as these countries are not major sources of import for both semi-finished and finished steel products. ASEAN said that although the import of slab from Russia is quite significant, Russia is not the only source of the import.
