Posted on 10 Dec 2024
China's steel demand is expected to stay on a downtrend in 2025, with consumption across various industries showing divergence, Mysteel's chief analyst Wang Jianhua predicted at the company's annual conference in Shanghai over the weekend.
Specifically, Wang projected that China's apparent steel consumption could fall by 0.7% from the 2024 forecast to sit at 893.71 million tonnes in 2025.
A key factor driving this decline, Wang highlighted, is the ongoing struggle in China's property market, which is expected to remain a major challenge for the broader economy in 2025 and continue to weigh on the steel industry. High levels of housing inventory are likely to severely constrain steel usage in new real estate projects, he noted.
As such, steel consumption in the real estate sector is projected to drop by 6.6% on year, or around 20.64 million tonnes, compared to the 2024 forecast.
On the other hand, steel demand from China's manufacturing sector is expected to see some growth in 2025, which will help partially offset losses in the property sector, Wang said.
Specifically, steel consumption from the shipbuilding and machinery sectors is projected to rise by 6.4% and 3% year on year in 2025. Similarly, demand from the home appliance and automobile industries may grow 2.8% and 1.5% respectively from 2024 estimates.
However, Wang expressed concerns about China's overseas steel market, citing the narrowing price gap between Chinese and foreign steel products, rising trade frictions, and the expansion of new steelmaking capacity abroad.
He forecast that China's direct steel exports in 2025 would decrease by 9.1% from the 2024 projection, to around 100 million tonnes.
Source:Mysteel Global
