The World Steel Association (worldsteel) estimates that global apparent steel demand will grow in both 2019 and 2020. The association announced this in its latest Short Range Outlook (SRO) on 14 October at its annual conference in Monterey, Mexico. Apparent steel demand growth in China could reach 7.8% year-on-year, although the data has been impacted by the closure of unregistered induction furnaces.

Global apparent steel demand is expected to grow by 3.9% in 2019 to 1.775 billion tonnes. In 2020 worldsteel expects further growth of 1.7% to 1.806 billion tonnes. Global steel demand will continue to grow in 2019 more than expected mainly supported by China, says Saeed Al Remeithi chief executive of Emirates Steel, and head of worldsteel’s economic committee. In the rest of the world, demand has slowed this year due to uncertainty, trade tensions, and geopolitical issues weighed on investment and trade, he notes.

In 2018 global steel demand grew some 2.1% y-o-y.

Back in April this year, the association’s outlook said 2019 demand would grow by just 1.3%, but the outlook was improved mainly due to the better-than expectd performance of China and Asia. As a matter of fact the outlook for other key regions such as Europe, Latin America and NAFTA were drastically slashed in the latest outlook, compared with previous data. Only Asia and CIS improved their performance above expectations.