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Five key topics are expected to feature at Fastmarkets’ Middle East Iron and Steel 2025 Conference in Dubai, to run November 17-19.
This year’s agenda reflects the urgency and ambition of the industry – from navigating geopolitical shifts and market volatility to accelerating decarbonization and scaling-up green steel production.
MEIS 2025 will include discussions on new global trade flows amid rising trade protectionism, and will explore how industrial companies can leverage their resources and technologies, including hydrogen, natural gas and green steel production, to gain a competitive edge.
While European producers see the introduction of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as an equalization mechanism that will create similar conditions for foreign producers and local suppliers, many producers from the Middle East-North African region (MENA) consider it to be another level of protectionism, which was expected to spark further protectionism around the globe.
Under such conditions, some market participants believed that, while import quotas will be cut by almost 50%, allowing only 18.3 million tonnes of steel products to enter the EU, they will still not be fully utilized due to other protection measures.
But, when the safeguard replacement significantly limits the inflow of steel goods for current suppliers, which are widely represented by Asian mills among others, producers from the MENA region may have the chance to gain their market share, because the nature of the steelmaking process in the Middle East is comparatively much less carbon-intensive than that used in Asia, allowing them to be competitive in terms of the cost of carbon emissions certificates.
Consequently, the transition to lower levels of carbon emissions in steelmaking held both threats and opportunities for the MENA region.
Turkey was also intending to avoid increased imports by changing the requirements for the Inward Processing Regime (DIR), effective as of October 1, 2025, according to the country’s Official Gazette. Its adoption will take time, however, according to the Turkish Steel Producers Association.
Holders of Turkey’s DIR certificate are not subject to import duties on the condition that they export their end-products. Most steel re-rollers use their certification for their imports.
The changes to the regulations include shortening the expiry date of DIR documents to produce hot-rolled coil from imported steel slab to four months, instead of the current six months.
Similarly, the documents for imported billet and slab that are to be further processed, such as cold-rolling, coating, etc, will be six months, a change from the current nine months.
In addition, the new regulations will require producers to buy a minimum of 25% locally produced billet, wire rod, slab and HRC for their use.
Changes in regulations will be a key subject for discussions at four panels during the second and the third days of the MEIS event. The effects of geopolitics will also be in focus for speakers during all three days of the event.
Despite steel production in the MENA region already being less carbon-intensive compared with other regions, many steelmakers keep focusing on the reduction of carbon emissions either by investing in new projects or by looking for ways to further reduce emissions using existing capacities, with transition to the use of hydrogen offered as a key solution.
The most recent project was announced by Emirates Steel, the biggest steelmaker in the United Arab Emirates.
Italian engineering company Danieli, in collaboration with Kanthal and Emirates Steel Arkan (now known as EMSTEEL), in September launched the world’s first electric Process-Gas Heater (e-PGH) pilot at industrial scale in the steel industry.
The project will test electric heating for process gas at a direct-reduced iron (DRI) plant in Abu Dhabi, intended to advance the decarbonization of ironmaking.
Last year, EMSTEEL announced the successful launch of a green hydrogen pilot project with renewable energy producer Masdar. The pilot project successfully demonstrated the use of green hydrogen to produce green steel, using hydrogen instead of natural gas to extract iron from iron ore.
Oman’s Vulcan Green Steel (VGS) continues work on a fully integrated green hydrogen-ready steel plant, producing 5 million tonnes per year of green steel with approximately 85% less CO2 emissions than the current global average. The project is scheduled for completion by 2026, with production starting in 2027.
Algeria’s Tosyali, meanwhile, is working to supply its direct reduced iron (DRI) operations with green hydrogen and renewables in cooperation with Sonatrach and Sonelgaz, the nation’s oil and gas and electricity suppliers.
Additionally, Tosyali is working on a new massive DRI/HBI project in cooperation with Libya United Steel Co, Midrex and SMS, intended to boost DRI exports and enable production with lower emissions. The project will be realized in three phases to produce a total of 8.1 million tpy of DRI.
And compatriot company Libyan Iron & Steel Co (LISCO) is also working on a project in cooperation with Danieli to produce 2 million tpy of DRI/HBI. The project will initially use gas, which can later be switched to green hydrogen.
As a result, the region will be able to offer a wide variety of green steel products from metallics to finished steel, to serve the world’s demand for less carbon-intensive steel products.
The decarbonization trend, technological innovations and certification will be discussed during panels as well as in presentations, mainly on the second and the third days of the MEIS event.
The MENA region is expected by various analysts to be among the three fastest-growing markets in steel demand in the next two years at least.
The World Steel Association (Worldsteel) says that steel demand in the Middle East will reach 62.5 million tpy in 2026, a 4% increase from 2025.
Solid steel demand supports higher steel production in the region, which is expected to increase by more than 14% in 2027 compared with 2024, according to Research & Consulting Group (RCG). The Middle East showed the biggest rise in crude steel production compared with other regions in September 2025, with a 9.3% increase, according to Worldsteel.
Higher steel output and paths toward decarbonization create a strong pipeline for new DRI projects. So despite the DR pellet market being oversupplied at the moment, in the coming years, its shortage may become a real threat to the industry.
This is one reason behind the increasing number of producers developing integrated pelletizing capacities throughout the MENA region.
Higher steel demand and output – and higher need of raw materials – could also become a reason why the MENA region may not become a massive DRI/HBI supplier to the international free spot market. Some industrial sources also believe that, owing to limited scrap availability, some countries in the region could become active importers of such products.
During the MEIS event, the DRI/HBI perspectives, pellet supply forecasts and potential shifts in trade flows will be discussed by leaders of the industry and technology pioneers at three panel discussions, two presentations and two workshops on the second and the third days.
China, the world’s largest steel exporter, has shifted its export destinations in response to anti-dumping duties imposed by traditional markets such as Vietnam and South Korea.
As a result, Chinese steel exports are increasingly being redirected to regions such as the Middle East and Africa.
In the first half of 2025, China’s steel exports reached 58.15 million tonnes, an 8.9% year-on-year increase, according to the China Iron & Steel Association.
But exports to Vietnam and South Korea fell by 24.7% and 15.1% year on year respectively, while exports to Middle Eastern counties such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia rose by 10.7% and 17.4% year on year respectively.
Weak forecasts for steel demand in China in the coming years have forced market insiders to expect a high volume of imports from China to continue to come into the MENA region.
Asia and China in particular will be in focus at two panel discussions and a presentation on the second and third days of the MEIS event.
With the initiation of CBAM imminent, and steelmakers across the globe keeping a close eye on their carbon emissions, the supply of ferrous scrap is becoming an increasingly hot topic.
Every tonne of scrap used for steel production avoids the emission of 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to Worldsteel.
But availability of this critical raw material is tight in key scrap-consuming – and rapidly growing – MENA region steel markets such as Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, where the quality of available material is also often lower than consumers desire.
“We go for more DRI because of cost, but for exporting [to Europe], we are working on [using] more scrap,” an Egyptian steelmaker source told Fastmarkets on October 29.
Egyptian import demand for scrap has surged recently following last month’s imposition of billet safeguard duties and provisions for new billet production in the country, industry sources said.
Morocco has also demonstrated a sharp growth in import scrap demand this year amid the development of new steelmaking capacity and stricter standards restrictions on steel imports. UK scrap exports to the country came to 623,210 tonnes in January-August 2025, according to UK customs statistics compiled by the Global Trade Tracker, up by 204% year on year.
Import demand in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is set to rise further and government agencies there intend to establish a scrap import organization that can increase the purchasing power for scrap consumers in the country, including that of smaller mills.
But growing scrap protectionism is a major threat to steelmakers’ ambitions in the MENA region, according to market sources.
European scrap supply is under question, while EU authorities consider whether to apply export tariffs to the material this year, while the revamped Waste Shipment Regulation will come into effect on exports of EU scrap classified as “waste” from 2027.
The European Commission confirmed in February that 24 nations outside of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) submitted applications to continue to receive non-hazardous EU waste, in compliance with the new WSR from 2027.
The first list of countries authorized to receive these materials from the EU will be established by November 21, 2026, the Commission said. Applicants included Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
“More steelmakers want to consume scrap because of CBAM, but nobody knows how CBAM will work in Europe yet,” a Saudi Arabian mill source said. “There is a huge demand for scrap, [and the] days of relying on 100% scrap are gone.”
Over the three-day event, there will be a number of scrap-focused sessions, including a deep-dive on supply and demand in the MENA region, a debate on scrap versus DRI in the scale-up of steelmaking capacity, and a special session on the launch of Fastmarkets’ world-first Saudi Arabia scrap index.
Find out more about the event, and to book your tickets, here.