At the SteelOrbis 2018 Spring Conference & 78th IREPAS Meeting held in Warsaw on May 6-8, Jose Angel Rey, international commercial director of Spanish steel producer CELSA Group, said that at the previous IREPAS meeting in September 2017 global rebar consumption forecast for 2017 amounted to 360 million mt, while now for 2018 the worldwide rebar consumption expectation stands at 391 million mt. He added that, even if rebar consumption does not reach 391 million mt in 2018, he is convinced that in 2019 rebar consumption will surpass 400 million mt.
Mr. Rey said that the global construction industry will grow at an average of 3.7 percent in the 2018-22 period. He pointed out that finished steel product demand in 2018 is growing in all areas, while in 2019 there will be a slowdown in all regions except for Africa. In the first quarter of the current year, global crude steel production increased by 4.1 percent year on year to 426.6 million mt, with China accounting for most of the growth. In March alone, the global crude steel capacity utilization rate was 74.5 percent, the highest monthly rate in the last two years and a half.
According to the CELSA official, global rebar consumption in the first quarter this year grew by four percent on year-on-year basis, with significant strength in East and Southeast Asia, followed by the CIS region and Turkey with a joint growth rate of 3.2 percent, and growth of around 2.5 percent in North America. In the EU-28, a growth rate of only 0.7 percent has been reported.
Mr. Rey cited the key risks to be considered as Chinese domestic rebar demand, as it is the key factor for the profitability of global rebar production, general geopolitical tensions, and the domino effect of protectionism in the different areas of the world.