Final figures for steel production in 2003 are likely to show a modest amount of growth in crude steel output by the 15 EU member states. This is perhaps better than could have been expected given the adverse circumstances under which the industry operated for much of the past twelve months.

The EU's generally dismal economic performance last year left steel demand rates similar to 2002. Industrial production, a key driver of steel consumption, was flat. The construction sector, steel's biggest market, is also estimated to have been little changed year-on-year.

MEPS' latest World Steel Outlook puts EU crude steel production in 2003 at 159.9 million tonnes, up by just over 1.4 million tonnes on the previous year. The increase was almost entirely accounted for by the UK catching up with lost steel making in 2002.

UK steel output increased by about 10 percent in 2003. However, in the previous year, it was down at the Corus Port Talbot works because of a blast furnace explosion. The company had to import more than 1 million tonnes of slabs to cover this shortfall. Crude steel making figures in the UK were also depressed in 2002 by the closure of ASW's electric furnace plants at Cardiff and Sheerness in mid-year. Supply from both sites resumed under new ownership in 2003, giving a further boost to last year's figures.

EU producers and traders exported some of the additional crude steel output in the form of semi-finished products (largely slabs and billets) to regions such as Asia, the Middle East and North America. As a result, we expect final statistics for finished steel production in the EU to show a year-on-year decline in 2003. Our World Steel Outlook puts the output of EU rolling mills at 139 million tonnes last year, down by 1.5 million tonnes from 2002. Most of the fall (around 1.2 million tonnes) was in the long products sector, but there was also a decline in flat products manufacturing as producers strove to avoid over-supplying the market so as to prevent prices weakening.

Despite the strengthening of the euro against the dollar, EU mills did not lose too much market share to imports. As the dollar is used almost universally in international steel trading, its weakness against the EU currency made local mills ever watchful of a possible surge in third country supply. There was an increase in imports last year and that may have been approaching 11 percent or 1.7 million tonnes. It seems China was a more attractive market than the EU for most of 2003.

The EU authorities had controls on some steel imports for much of the year in response to the USA's "Section 201" measures. These were lifted in December after President Bush eliminated the US import tariffs.

Strong export demand (notably from China and the fast-growing markets of the Middle East) enabled the EU to maintain a positive steel trade balance. Tentative figures for the first ten months of 2003 show that exports increased faster than imports, perhaps by about 14 percent (excluding semi-finished products).

Source: MEPS - European Steel Review