Тhe future of the steel industry

 

       In 2020 worldsteel forecasts that steel demand will contract by -2.4%, dropping to 1,725.1 Mt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 steel demand is expected to recover to 1,795.1 Mt, an increase of 4.1 % over 2020.

       The strong recovery in China will mitigate the reduction in global steel demand this year. The recovery in steel demand in the rest of the world after the coronavirus was stronger than previously expected, but in 2020 it still means a deep contraction in both developed and emerging market economies.Therefore, only a partial recovery is expected in 2021. Iran produced 16.335 million tons during the January-July  period of 2020 - 10.8% more than the figure in the same seven months of 2019.

     Among the world’s 64 steel producers, only nine, including China (the world’s largest steel producers), Iran, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Chile, Turkey, Norway, and Australia, saw production growth in the said period while the rest 55 countries were faced with declining production. The world’s 64 top steel producers managed to produce 1.27 billion tons of crude steel in the said period, 5.3 percent less than the output for the last year’s same seven months.

Overall steel demand in the developed economies is expected to fall by 14.9% in 2020 and increase by 7.9% in 2021 and to reach 2019 pre-pandemic levels only in 2022.