According to the customs statistics provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Turkey's slab imports amounted to 178,248 metric tons in January this year, falling 13 percent compared to the previous month, after four consecutive months of month-on-month increase and having reached an all-time monthly high in December 2012. However, Turkey's slab imports in January this year indicated a very strong increase compared to the 25,011 mt recorded in the same month of 2012.
Turkey's biggest slab import source in January was Russia with 81,145 mt, with the import volume from Russia rising gradually since September last year on month-on-month basis, while Sweden followed Russia, exporting 52,834 mt of slab to Turkey in January. The UK, Turkey's top slab import source in 2012, supplied 44,185 mt in the month in question, down 3.7 percent compared to the previous month.
Turkey's slab import distribution with respect to source countries in January is as follows:
As Steelorbis previously reported, in 2012 Turkey's slab imports hit the highest annual level recorded since 2005, with 950,490 mt, more than sextuple compared to the previous year.