Steel exports are expected to contract by 10-15%

The new epidemic continues to spread around the world, no doubt on the impact of China's steel exports, and then affect the steel demand.This paper attempts to quantify the impact of overseas fermentation on domestic steel exports.

In 2019, China's net export of crude steel was 52.29 million tons, accounting for 5.2 percent of the annual output.From the large export categories, China's steel exports to plate - based.According to the general administration of customs, 38.48 million tons of panels were exported in 2019, accounting for as much as 60 percent of steel exports.In addition, bar material accounts for 15%, tube material accounts for 14%, Angle profile accounts for 5%.The export of the plate subdivision, the export of the larger plate is mainly coated plate (32%), medium thickness and wide steel strip (23%), coated plate (17%) and plate (14%).From the regional distribution, China's exports of steel mainly flow to southeast Asia and Africa, a large proportion of the flow to South Korea, and Europe and the United States and Oceania accounted for only 10%.

In comparison with output and export figures for 2019, the proportion of exports of steel with coarse steel diameter in total output is about 7%.The largest export volume of the plate, its export proportion reached 10.9%.Among them, hot rolled coil plate as a kind of plate, the proportion of export is about 3.8%;Rebar exports accounted for a relatively low 2.1%.Obviously, the demand impact of overseas epidemic fermentation on hot coil, cold coil and other plates is significantly greater than that of rebar and other construction steels.

Although the proportion of direct exports of steel products is not large, and the proportion of exports to Europe and the United States and other regions with rapid epidemic development is relatively small, we need to consider the corresponding indirect exports of steel products.

Combing through the data from the general administration of customs, steel products can be classified into four categories: machinery and equipment, home appliances, automobiles, ships and containers, and their respective export volumes in 2019 can be summarized.Then, considering the domestic output and market size of the four categories of commodities in 2019, the export proportion of these four categories of steel products can be calculated respectively.Among them, the shipping and container industry exports a very large proportion, accounting for 94.5%. The subsequent new orders are bound to be impacted by the overseas epidemic, but the response may be delayed.In addition, the proportion of home appliances exports is not small, nearly 40% of the export demand or be hit.Comparatively speaking, the proportion of export of automobile industry is small, only about 5%;The proportion of exports of machinery and equipment is about 13%, which is not high. If subdivided into construction machinery, the proportion of exports increases slightly to 16%.

After obtaining the export proportion of the four major types of steel products, and then according to the weight of the four types of steel products in the total consumption of steel weighted average, it can be estimated that the indirect export proportion of steel products is about 19.3%.This proportion is obviously much higher than that of direct export of steel.In addition, China's steel products export objects relative to the steel export, more dispersed, flow to Europe and the United States and other places in proportion to increase.For example, rolling bearings in mechanical equipment will account for nearly 30% of exports to Europe and the U.S. in 2019.It can be seen that the outbreak in Europe and the United States intensified overseas, the impact of the indirect export of steel is more alarming.

After estimating the proportion of steel exports indirectly, the proportion of direct exports is combined to further evaluate the proportion of steel exports/output in China.The proportion of steel products in the downstream consumption of the whole steel industry is about 36.5%, and most of them still flow to the domestic construction industry. Considering the proportion of direct steel exports of 6.9%, the comprehensive export proportion of the whole steel industry can be weighted and estimated to be about 13.9%.

According to the two or three quarters of the impact time, 20% of the production decline is estimated, the overseas outbreak of continuous fermentation on China's steel industry exports (including direct exports and indirect exports) the impact of 10-15%.Combined with the previous data of steel exports accounting for about 13.9% of the total output, the impact of China's total steel demand is expected to be 1.3%-2.1%, which means that the construction industry needs to achieve additional growth of 3.6% to fully hedge the negative impact of exports.So, although the hot rolled coil plate and other plate has fallen to the cost line, but in the medium and long term, the price trend of the plate is still not optimistic.