Russian metallurgy increases

After stagnation of 2013, the Russian metallurgic sector has increased production again despite he common negative tendencies in the economy balancing near the zero. In H1 2014, the sector increased by 2.4% compared to 1.2% in Q1 2014.

The rolled steel yield increased by 3.9% including by 4.7% more of sort steel and by 3.7% more of steel plates. Sort steel yield increases mostly at the expense of growth in demand at the internal market by the construction sector. Last year they launched several new electric metal mini-mills producing hardware with total capacity of over 1.5 million tons. Steel plates yield increases at the expense of growth in exports. FTS reports that exports of flat sections made of carbonaceous steel increased in H1 2014 by 5.3% to 4.0 million tons, the highest results for the latest 4 years. Growth in exports is connected with ruble devaluation and political crisis in the Ukraine due to that the Ukrainian metal commodities was partially substituted with the Russian analogues. Due to this reason in 2014 one can observe growth in internal demand for the commodities of the Russian metal plants.