According to the latest report issued by IREPAS, the global association for longs exporters and producers, “The global long steel products market is oversupplied and overcrowded. The situation has worsened and is now structural.” The association underlined that the competition which now characterizes the global long steel market is unprecedented and is resulting in a crisis where margins are thinner than ever, while it has become practically impossible to negotiate for higher prices.
The 50 percent duty imposed by the US on steel imports is another first, which is ironically causing disruption both in the local US market and, as one could have predicted, in international markets. In this scenario, longs demand is also declining in the European and Turkish markets, and this situation is foreseen to continue unless there are some structural changes in end-users’ consumption. On top of this, cheaper billet imports from Asia are putting even stronger downward pressure on longs prices.
“Far Eastern and Southeast Asian origin steel billet prices are going down almost every day,” IREPAS reports, and this is also causing billets to replace scrap, as it is now cheaper to start rolling from semi-finished steel than produce from raw materials.
China is still playing a major role in the market oversupply of longs products. Their internal demand weakness, lower BF-based production costs, and export subsidies from the government indicate that this trend is likely to continue. IREPAS reports that in in the first quarter of 2025 China’s long steel exports were more than 100 percent higher year on year. The massive presence of China and its cheaper prices are causing other Asian producers to struggle to find a market share.
As IREPAS has been underlining since the beginning of the year, it has become very hard to make predictions on future trends - the market is unstable and unprofitable, as well as highly dependent on political decisions. However, according to the OECD in its Steel Outlook 2025, Chinese long steel demand will decline due to the economic crisis in the country, whereas it is likely that demand will grow significantly in the ASEAN and MENA regions.