At the recent 1st Assofermet Day & SteelOrbis Conference held in Brescia in northern Italy, Serdar Kilimci, sales Manager of Turkish steel producer Colakoglu Metalurji, gave a presentation on Turkish flat steel imports, exports, production and consumption.
Mr. Kilimci started his speech by pointing to the imbalance between the production of flat products and long products in Turkey. In the first nine months of the current year, for instance, the output of longs amounted to 19.668 million metric tons, while flat steel output reached 7.137 million mt. Domestic consumption in the period was 12.363 million mt for longs and 10.710 million mt for flats.
Mr. Kilimci underlined that in the first nine months of 2013 production of finished steel products in Turkey rose by 4.8 percent, while finished steel consumption increased by 8.4 percent, year on year. In the given period, Turkey’s long product production exceeded domestic longs consumption by around 59 percent, while its flat steel production was equivalent to just 67 percent of flat steel demand in the country.
A lack of balance is also observed as regards imports and exports. In the first nine months this year, Turkey’s exports of billets and blooms amounted to 1.356 million mt, compared to imports of 2.294 million tons. At the same time, Turkish flat steel exports in the period in question came to 1.858 million mt, compared to imports of 5.431 million mt. Finally, the country’s long steel exports in the January-September period this year totaled 8.383 million mt, against long steel imports of 1,078,000 mt.
Kilimci stated that in the January-September period this year Turkey produced 7.1 million mt of flat steel and consumed 10.7 million mt of flats, with a production shortfall of 3.6 million mt. He then listed Turkey’s most important producers of slabs and hot rolled coils (HRC) in order of importance, starting with Erdemir (3.8 million mt of slab and 4.5 million mt of HRC), Isdemir (5.0 million mt and 3.5 million mt), Colakoglu Metalurji (3.5 million mt and 3.0 million mt) and Toscelik (1.5 million mt and 1.0 million mt). Kilimci also remarked that Colakoglu, Isdemir and Toscelik have a very flexible production flow, which can be shifted easily between billet and slab production.
Concluding his presentation, the Colakoglulu official said that in the coming years the Turkish steel industry will focus increasingly on value-added products. He stated that the rapid increase in slab production is expected to continue until 2015, while Turkey’s steel consumption per capita is expected to continue to move towards the level of developed countries. Furthermore, in parallel with the investments in flat steel production in Turkey, the share of Turkish producers in the domestic market for hot rolled flat products will increase, while Turkish flat producers will also be more active in the international markets. Mr. Kilimci said he thus believes that, in addition to long products, flat steel will also become an important export product for Turkey in its export main markets and that the ability of Turkish producers to switch between long and flat steel production will give them a competitive advantage.
