The share of imports in Turkey’s flat steel demand remains significant, despite the decline observed in the January-August period this year. In the meantime, local mills managed to somewhat increase their export presence, but faced a shrinkage of sales to their domestic market amid an overall flat steel consumption fall in Turkey.
Turkey imported 4.76 million mt of flat products in the first eight months this year, down 13.2 percent year on year, the Turkish Steel Producers’ Association (TCUD) reports. Despite the decline, supplies from abroad still took around 50 percent of local flat steel consumption in Turkey, which indicated a 14.3 percent drop year on year to 9.7 million mt.
Despite the challenging business environment, Turkish mills managed to expand their export presence by 10 percent in the January-August period and to sell 3.67 million mt, the TCUD data show. However, taking into account some slowdown in flat steel consumption in the EU, the results for the last quarter of the year may show some decline in imports. In the meantime, Turkey’s internal flats sales dropped to 4.9 million mt.