During the "New Horizons in Global Steel Markets" 12th Annual Conference organized by SteelOrbis in Istanbul on November 2, Burak Soydan, general manager of NLMK Turkey, subsidiary of major Russian steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), stated that NLMK’s decision to open a sales office in Turkey is customer-focused, aiming to establish business partnerships beyond trade.
Acknowledging that the electrode shortage has been having an effect on the steel market as it causes uncertainty and risks, Mr. Soydan said that NLMK has two electric arc furnaces and has already taken the electrode shortage into consideration in terms of its pricing.
Commenting on the antidumping duty imposed on HRC imports into the EU, the NLMK official said that the company has only sold 20,000 mt of HRC to the EU in the last 12 months and, with six plants in the EU, NLMK only sells slab to the EU to feed its plants and has no business plans to sell HRC to the region. He also pointed out that Russian HRC exports to the EU in general have fallen significantly and so they are not likely to be negatively impacted by the antidumping duty, adding that major companies in the EU will benefit from these antidumping duties, while the smaller ones will have difficulties in terms of supplies.