South Korean imports of mild steel wire rods rose sharply to around 384,000 tonnes (t) in Jan-Nov’21 against 124,000 t in CY’20. Increased imports have raised concerns over the quality of products and safety issues, though.
China, claiming half the share of total imports in Jan-Nov’21 at 174,931 t, continues to remain the major exporter. The volumes have risen by 99% against same period lasy year. However, it has come to light that owing to competitive pricing, the share from India along with other South East Asian countries are on the rise. Imports of 122,197 t were reported from 10 ASEAN countries in Southeast Asia during the said products, with a whopping 1,011% increase over the year-ago period.
The domestic manufacturers, Hyundai Steel and POSCO, have continued to reduce supplies due to high-grade steel sales policies, whereas the annual market requirement for wire rods stands at around 1.2 mn t/year.
Thus, to fill the gap, buyers have resorted to low-priced imported products. This has raised concerns among industry participants about the proper verification of the quality of the imported products. Although the best part of imports has been from China in the past, they too haven’t remained untouched from safety issues, which gets further aggravated by the surge in volumes from non-traditional exporting countries.
In the case of POSCO, in terms of corporate citizenship, it is highly likely that the company will intervene in the market at any time under the pretext of protecting the domestic market, preventing disturbances in the imported goods market, and taking a preemptive response to safety issues.
~ Inputs from Steel Daily.
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