At the Eurometal Steel Day & YISAD Flat Steel Conference held at Istanbul Marriott Hotel Asia on Tuesday, April 8, in cooperation with SteelOrbis and with nearly 400 participants, Laurent Taylor, senior trader at Manuchar Steel, shared official statistics regarding EU-Turkey steel trade and also his view regarding the strategic importance of this trade collaboration.
Starting his speech by pointing to the historical development of trade between Turkey and the EU, Mr. Taylor stated that for over 60-65 years there has been a strong partnership between these markets. “Today the trade in these two areas amounts to €206 billion. With the worldwide trade of goods in total being €25 trillion in 2024, it represents more than 10 percent. Turkey is Europe's fifth largest trade partner. On the other hand, Europe is the main export and import partner for Turkey. Over the past 10 years, the trade has also expanded by 80 percent,” he stated.
Commenting on the shift from globalization to regionalization, the Manuchar Steel official stated that over the past 40 years the Asian end-user market was not mature and cheap labour costs had driven production in the East. However, the Asian end-user market has picked up strongly, labour costs in the region are not cheap anymore, and logistical challenges such as the Suez Canal blockage and Red Sea attacks severely impacted global trade. “If we look at the world today, we are not where we were 30 to 40 years ago. Low labor costs are gone, we have a lot more barriers, and we have a lot more logistic challenges, which are making ships go all the way around and complicating things. So, following globalization, what we are noticing is regionalization. It is not about one single country like the US,” Taylor stated. He underlined that Turkey is strategically positioned to benefit from the regionalization trend, while Turkish steel mills will certainly have a competitive advantage considering the high quality of their scrap-based production.
Mr. Taylor said that 60 percent of EU scrap exports account for just over half of Turkish scrap imports. “It highlights the importance of each side to the other. Looking into the trade between Europe and Turkey, both benefit from each other. Europe is the key supplier of raw materials and also a good market for finished steel products. Global political instability has now increased even more thanks to Donald Trump. We are seeing that there is going to be a greater and greater trend for regional closeness to be able to manage the fluctuations of prices in the world. So, it's better to buy from your neighbor than to go all the way to the other side of the world,” he commented.