The World Steel Association (worldsteel) has stated that the global steel demand is projected to rise by 1.7 percent in 2024 and 1.2 percent in 2025.
The London-based organization released its Short Range Outlook (SRO) steel demand forecast for 2024 and 2025. worldsteel forecasts that this year’s global steel demand will see a 1.7 percent rebound to reach 1,793 Mt. Steel demand is forecast to grow by 1.2 percent in 2025 to reach 1,815 Mt.
Dr. Martin Theuringer, Chairman of the worldsteel Economics Committee, said that, “After two years of negative growth and severe market volatility since the COVID crisis in 2020, we see early signs of global steel demand settling in a growth trajectory in 2024 and 2025.”
Dr. Martin Theuringer Chairman worldsteel Economics Committee
“The global economy continues to show resilience despite facing several strong headwinds, the lingering impact from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, high inflation, high costs and falling household purchasing power, rising geopolitical uncertainties, and forceful monetary tightening. As we approach the end of this monetary tightening cycle, we observed that tighter credit conditions and higher costs have led to a sharp slowdown in housing activity in most major markets, and have hampered the manufacturing sector globally. While it seems the world economy will experience a soft landing from this monetary tightening cycle, we expect to see global steel demand growth remaining weak and market volatility remaining high on lagged impact of monetary tightening, high costs, and high geopolitical uncertainties.”
worldsteel’s forecast on China’s steel demand
This projection suggests that by 2025 China’s steel demand will be significantly lower than the recent peak demand year, 2020. This projection is also in line with our view that China might have reached its peak steel demand, and the country’s steel demand is likely to continue to decline in the medium-term, as China gradually moves away from a real estate and infrastructure investment-dependent economic development model.
“Our projections for the world excluding China suggest a broad-based growth in steel demand at a relatively strong level of 3.5 percent per annum over 2024-25.” as per the statement.
India
India has emerged as the strongest driver of steel demand growth since 2021, and our projections suggest Indian steel demand will continue to charge ahead with 8 percent growth in its steel demand over 2024 and 2025, driven by continued growth in all steel using sectors and especially by continued strong growth in infrastructure investments. In 2025, steel demand in India is projected to be almost 70 million tonnes higher than in 2020.
MENA & ASEAN
Other emerging parts of the world such as MENA and ASEAN are expected to show accelerating growth in their steel demand over 2024-2025 after a significant slowdown over 2022-2023. We observe that mounting difficulties in the ASEAN region, such as political instability and erosion of competitiveness, might lead to a lower trend steel demand growth going forward.
European Union
The EU (and the UK) region’s steel demand is expected to finally show a meaningful recovery with a 5.3 percent growth in 2025. The forecasted steel demand for the EU in 2024 is only 1.5 Mt higher than the pandemic trough in 2020.
US
The US steel demand continues to show healthy steel demand fundamentals. The country’s steel demand is expected to quickly return to a growth path in 2024 after a sharp drop led by the housing market slowdown in 2023 because of the strong investment activity, which received a boost from the Inflation Reduction Act and a gradual recovery in housing activity.
The developed world is also expected to show a strengthening recovery with 1.3 percent in 2024 and 2.7 percent in 2025, as we expect to see steel demand finally showing a meaningful pick up in the EU in 2025 and continued resilience in the US, Japan, and Korea.
