Ukraine place in the World Steel Association ranking of steel manufacturing countries is hardly encouraging as out of 62 countries on the WSA list, Ukraine manages to keep only 10th position this year, KW wrote in an article this week. China remains the unchanging leader of the world metallurgy providing nearly half of the world’s output: in April its crude steel production was at 60.5 mn t with the total world’s output 128.3 mn t. In the first four months of the year, China’s steel industry produced 233.9 mn t of steel with the world’s output at 503.9 mn t. Other traditional leaders are Japan, USA, Russia, India, South Korea and Germany, though they are far behind the leader. For comparison, April’s output in all these countries together amounted to only 38.3 mn t, quarterly – 152.35 mn t.
Ukraine’s result looks even more modest on this background: 2.52 mn t in April and 10.5 mn t in Q1. Brazil is one position higher than Ukraine and Turkey is two positions higher in quarterly output. These two countries managed to make a breakthrough and beat Ukrainian metallurgists, though in the last year’s ranking they were in the bottom of the top 10.
Noteworthy, growth of quarterly production in Turkey and its decrease in Ukraine fully correspond amounting to 11.4%. at that, over the next four-five years Turkey is planning to launch new capacities for another 15 mn t. Ukraine will thus get a powerful competitor on the its key markets of Europe and Middle East.
The problems of Ukrainian metallurgists are not limited to Turkish expansion. Besides Turkey, Iran is planning to radically improve self-supply of metal. Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that in the next four-five year the country was planning to increase its steel production to 48 mn t, while the current capacities stand at around 20 mn t and annual output is only 14 mn t. Meanwhile, Italy could put under question Ukraine’s membership in the top ten already this year as it was behind Ukraine in the Q1 by only 705,000 t.
