VTB24’s survey of situation in metal industry

In the first quarter of 2015, most of the Russian metallurgy industry didn’t seem successful. According to State Statistics Service (Rosstat), in the first three months of the year, the industrial production fell by 0.4% (for the year), while on the whole metal production fell by 1.4%. However, the statistics in a large group, concerning the production of industrial and precious metals, was very heterogeneous. The data on the steel industry says more about the growth of the physical volume of the production, rather than a recession. And the general data on the entire economy of the first quarter showed a much smaller depth of the drop than people feared early in the year. Thus, in the first quarter, the steel production grew by 3.5%, ferrous metals by 4.3% and steel pipes by 18.1%. According to the analysis of published material, the crisis difficulties mainly concern the market of non-ferrous metals rather than  iron one. According to Rosstat, the index of non-ferrous metals declined by 8% in the first quarter. The fall was strongly marked on such items as aluminum wire, copper profiles and copper wire, platinum, etc.