India managed to increase its import scrap volumes by 11.41 percent year on year to 7.05 million mt in 2019, surpassing South Korea to become the largest scrap importer in Asia. Suppliers from Europe benefited the most from the higher demand for scrap in India.
The UAE remained the major exporter to India in 2019, sending 1.153 million mt of scrap, mainly unchanged compared to 2018 (down just 0.57 percent). Exporters from the US (the second largest source for India) managed to increase shipments by 9.3 percent year on year to 767,244 mt.
Three major European exporters - the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany - supplied 638,300 mt of scrap to India in 2019, up 34.5 percent or about 220,000 from 2018.
In 2019, crude steel production in India added 1.8 percent year on year to 111.2 million mt, according to the World Steel Association (worldsteel), leading to higher raw material consumption. It is expected that in 2020 India’s scrap imports will keep rising as improvement in steel consumption is foreseen to support higher production volumes.
Scrap import volumes to South Korea remained almost stable at about 6.5 million mt in 2019, while Vietnam posted a decline of two percent year on year in its scrap import volume as the share of steel production by BF-based mills increased.