Steel industry - Statistics & Facts

China is the global steel market leader

The European Union and the United States were the world leading steel importers in 2019, recording respectively an import volume over 40 and 27 million metric tons. China was the leader of the steel export market in 2019, dwarfing all other countries by over 30 million metric tons. Overcapacities in the sector became the new normal when China, the world's largest producer of steel, ramped up production and flooded the markets, including the United States, with cheap steel. However, Canada was the main source for the United States' imports for consumption of steel products in 2020, representing close to four billion U.S. dollars of steel products.
The Luxembourg-based steel maker ArcelorMittal was the world’s largest crude steel producer in 2019, with an output of over 97 million metric tons of crude steel. It was followed closely by the China-based Baowu Group, which overtook ArcelorMittal as the largest steel company based on sales as of March 2020. Reporting revenues of close to 80 billion U.S. dollars, the Baowu Group had made over nine billion more than its main competitor.

Diverse uses for a widely-recycled alloy

More than half of the steel end-usage worldwide was in the building and infrastructure sector in 2019, with mechanical equipment and the automotive sector ranking second and third. Steel is an alloy which is typically made by combining its main ingredient, iron, and other elements. These additional elements, coupled with the right temperature, play a crucial role when it comes to changing the metal's properties in terms of strength, toughness, ductility, weldability, and durability. The perfect combination of iron and other elements, including manganese, carbon or base metals such as nickel and copper, helps produce the type of steel that is the best fit for a certain need. In light of increasing environmental awareness, it has to be emphasized that this ferrous metal is one of the most widely recycled materials worldwide. In 2019, worldwide consumption of steel scrap came to around 491 million metric tons.

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