Turkish steelmakers raised slab imports by 34.2pc in 2020 on an annual basis, considering their requirements for flat product output.
Turkey’s slab imports reached 2.39mn mt last year compared with 1.78mn mt in 2019, according to Turkish statistical source SteelData. Russia remained the key supplier of semis to Turkey, despite a decrease in shipments by 17.1pc to 1.04mn mt during the period under review. Ukraine increased its slab supply more than three times to 839,000mt, and Brazil doubled its shipments of semis to Turkey to 313,000mt last year.
It should be noted that Turkey imported 145,000mt of slabs from the UK in 2020, while in 2019 there was no supply from this country.
The Netherlands was the fifth-largest slab supplier to Turkey last year, but the country reduced its shipments by 70.9pc to 42,000mt.