Automotive producers are likely to be the first downstream sector to shift toward using “green steel,” Saudi Arabian steel producer Sulb Co's chief executive Ravi Singh told delegates at the Singapore Steel Forum 2021 on Wednesday July 14.

All the world’s major coking coal importers reduced their purchases in 2020 amid steel production cuts and lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

United Arab Emirates-based Dana Steel resumed hot-dipped galvanized coil production at its Dubai facility in June, company chief executive officer Ankur Dana told Fastmarkets this week.

Asian steel scrap imports fluctuated wildly from territory to territory in 2020, with South Korea and Bangladesh reporting decreases while Taiwan and Vietnam recorded increases.

European buyers of imported steel products are shocked by the extension of existing safeguard measures for another three years at a time when most of the industry’s segments are struggling from material shortage and, consequently, high prices.

The likely introduction of an export tax on Russian semi-finished steel products could cause tight supplies and a jump in prices for steel billet in Asia over the second half of 2021, sources told Fastmarkets on Friday June 25.

Global scrap prices in the key markets diverged in the week to Friday June 18, with those in Asia moving upward, while Turkish scrap prices fell amid slow buying driven by uncertainty over finished steel sales.

Growing steel demand presents an opportunity for a scrap pricing supercycle in the next decade, writes Bill Beck, reporting on the Fastmarkets virtual Scrap, DRI, and Mini-Mills conference in mid-April.

Many aluminium and steel market participants are increasingly optimistic that automotive production will bounce back in the second half of the year and hopeful that the semiconductor chip shortage will be resolved by 2022.

Appetites for steel scrap exports were broadly subdued in the week to Friday June 4, with the exception of imports into India and Pakistan.