Steel Market situation

The global pandemic continues to evolve, the external environment has become more complex and severe, and the economic recovery remains unstable and uneven. In the future, China’s economic growth is expected to slow down, and the overall trend is high and low. Since the beginning of this year, China’s infrastructure investment performance has been lower than market expectations, commodity prices such as structural steel pipe are generally high, major economic indicators are slightly weak, the manufacturing sector has also retreated, production has slowed down and market demand has declined.

Overcapacity reduction and crude steel output reduction are two key tasks for China’s steel industry. On the supply side, the dual control of production capacity and output may become a regular policy. With the reduction of crude steel output entering a substantial stage and domestic demand falling, China’s crude steel production will remain at a low level, and iron and steel enterprises will also regulate the production rhythm reasonably. On the consumption side, considering the tightening policy environment, weak real estate leading indicators, slowing growth of the value added of machinery industry, weakening demand of the construction industry and manufacturing industry and other factors, it is expected that the national mild steel tube demand next year will be basically the same or a small decline compared with the previous year. Under the guidance of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, the national steel demand will slowly decline in the medium and long term.

In terms of steel import and export of rectangular steel tube, under the “dual carbon” strategy, China will give priority to ensuring domestic steel demand and economic development, and restrict the export of primary steel products. In the short term, affected by factors such as international economic recovery and high international steel prices, it is expected that China’s steel exports will maintain overall growth and imports will maintain a decline in 2021, and the overall net export of steel will expand. In the medium and long term, with the low-carbon and high-quality development and continuous optimization of the iron and steel industry, only a few key varieties still rely on imports, China’s black iron steel pipe imports as a whole will show a slow decline, and may increase in some years; Steel exports will remain restricted. Corresponding to the target node of the national “double carbon” task, the low-carbon transformation of China’s steel industry must successively experience four stages of carbon emission peak, steady decline, relatively large decline, and deep decarbonization. At present, China’s steel industry carbon peak and carbon reduction action plan has been initially formulated and formed.