The world’s tenth-largest steel producer, Iran, has recorded a year-on-year decrease of 2% in its apparent steel consumption in the first three months of the Islamic Year (21 Mar-21 Jun), SteelMint gathered from data published by the Iranian Steel Producers Association.
While the country’s consumption of intermediate steel products inched down 1%, apparent consumption of sponge iron increased by 4% compared with the corresponding period last year.
Product-wise consumption
According to data furnished by the Association, apparent consumption of intermediate steel (billets, blooms and slabs) decreased by 1% to over 6.4 mn t. While total billet and bloom consumption was recorded at 3.82 mn t, the apparent consumption of steel slabs stood at 2.62 mn t. Billet and bloom consumption increased by 2%, while slab consumption decreased by 7%.
Consumption of flat steel sections witnessed de-growth of 4% but consumption of long steel sections remained unchanged y-o-y. Consumption of flat steel was around 2.33 mn t, of which 2.24 mn t was hot-rolled sheets, 728,000 t cold-rolled sheets and 371,000 t was covered sheets. The apparent consumption of hot sheets decreased by 5%, while the consumption of cold sheets increased by 6%. Apparent consumption of coated sheets, however, increased by 16%.
In the first three months of this year, the consumption of steel beams increased by 6% compared to the same period last year to 285,000 t, while consumption of rebar fell by 1% to 1.87 mn t. Consumption of corners, studs and other long steel sections increased by 6%. Moreover, the consumption of sponge iron increased by 4% to 8.43 mn t.
As per SteelMint reports, Iran’s finished steel production in the first three months of the Islamic Year stood at 5.39 mn t of which 3.1 mn t were long products and 2.298 mn t were flat products. Notably, steel exports by the country jumped 55% y-o-y.
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