Russian steelmakers have increasing problems on foreign markets

Excess of cheap steel on the global market led to the fact that in recent years the number of anti-dumping investigations in this area increased dramatically. The industry believes that its main threat is a sharp increase in the production in China, but closing from cheap Chinese steel importing countries also block the supply of metal from other countries, including Russia. It becomes increasingly difficult for domestic steelmakers to fight a wave of isolationism on their traditional overseas markets, and they can redirect the export to other countries always.

Since 2010, Russian steelmakers exported about one-third of the produced steel - 25-27 million tons of rolled products per year. These volumes are less than the export sales of 2008-2009, which reached 30 million tons, and may even decline because of the surge in protectionist investigations worldwide. According to the Ministry of Economy, in 2014-2015, 18 new investigations and revisions of measures affecting exports of Russian steel industry were initiated abroad, and eight of them have ended not in favor of Russia.