Worldsteel finds growth in “indirect” steel trade this decade

The Brussels-based World Steel Association (Worldsteel) has issued a report based on aggregated global trade statistics that show a significant increase in the cross-border shipment of cars, appliances and other steel-containing items in the 11-year span from 2013 to 2023.

 

According to the group, from 2013 to 2023, “indirect exports of steel for the 74 countries analyzed increased by 23 percent” during that time frame.

 

Worldsteel says its research shows in 2013 319 million tons of steel was contained in items shipped from one country to another that year. Eleven years later, in 2023 that figure had increased by 23 percent to 392 million metric tons.

 

In 2023, the volume of indirect trade in steel was equivalent in volume to 95 percent of direct exports of finished and semi-finished steel, says Worldsteel.

 

Noting that “indirect trade in steel takes place through exports and imports of goods that contain steel,” a chart accompanying the organization’s announcement lists those goods as belonging to six categories: automotive, other transport, domestic (household) appliances, mechanical machinery, electrical equipment and “metal products.”

 

“To process the indirect trade in steel calculations, it is necessary to count how much steel went into producing each manufactured product, namely the steel coefficients of each product, expressed in terms of the weight of the product,” states Worldsteel, adding that in its methodology, the steel coefficient is the amount of finished steel products (in metric tons) needed to produce one ton of a manufactured product.

 

When gathering trade data, Worldsteel indirect says it adopted the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) of the United Nations “to define traded goods in a detailed way, which involved using approximately 1,000 codes in the study.”

 

Worldsteel says the source of trade data used in its study is the UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade).

 

The full study is available free of charge to Worldsteel members while non-members can access it via the Worldsteel online bookshop for 5,900 euros ($6,880).