The European umbrella organisation for steel distributors, Eurometal, will be addressing the issue of import pressure at a conference in Düsseldorf on Tuesday, 20 October. The international steel trade meeting is subtitled, “What the future holds for imports in EU market supply,” and features a half dozen speakers on the issue. 

Antidumping and related trade cases “… seem to have leapt up so that you have the impression that one steel nation clads the other with trade complaints,” Eurometal director general, Georges Kirps says, explaining the motivation for the meeting. Such a trend threatens to interfere with the international operations of supply chains of large steel consumers. “The future of the material, steel, is at stake,” he tells Kallanish.

Some 450 million tonnes, or 30% of global steel demand are traded across borders, Eurometal statistics show.  The association highlights the case of quarto plate, for which the share of imports in EU market supply has risen most noticeably, from 15% in 2013 to 20% in 2014. In the first half of 2015, imports surged further, so that the EU has now become a net importer of quarto plate.

Guest speakers at the conference will include Martin Theuringer of German steel federation WV Stahl and Anthony de Carvalho of OECD. International trade lawyer Yuriy Rudyuk, ISTA president Tony Singer, and Alexander Julius of the European Steel Trading Study Group (STSG) will also speak.