Rio de Janeiro – Steel products sales in Brazil last year dropped 16.1% from 2014 levels, to 18.2 million tons, the industry institute Instituto Aço Brasil (IAB) reported this Monday (18).
In December, 1.1 million tons were sold, down 26.1% from December 2014.
Also in December, 115,000 tons of steel were imported to Brazil, at the cost of USD 143 million. In 2015, 3.2 million tons of steel products were imported.
The IAB also pointed out that “despite adverse international market conditions,” the industry managed to ship 1.6 million tons of steel products abroad in December, grossing 546 million in the process.
As a result, 2015 closed with exports 13.7 million tons exported and USD 6.6 billion in revenues – a 40.3% increment in volume, but a 3.3% drop in revenue. The IAB said this result was mostly a result of operations between companies “for supplying plants in Europe and the USA with semi-finished goods” and to “the industry’s emergency actions to prevent utilization of installed capacity from shrinking even further due to weak domestic market performance.”
Production
In December, 2.5 million tons of raw steel were produced in Brazil, down 6.1% from a year ago. Flat-rolled steel products output stood at 1.5 million tons – a 12.4% decline.
Raw steel product during the year was down 1.9% from 2014, to 33.2 million tons. Total flat-rolled steel products output reached 22.6 million tons, down 9.2% from a year ago.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
