EUROFER plans renewal on the EU steel pipe industry

EUROFER announced that manufacturing activity in the EU steel pipe industry has stabilized at levels seen a year earlier in the third quarter of 2019, quite similar to the situation in the first half of last year. This further confirms that due to the lower share of large pipes in the EU product range, the output of steel pipe producers is now more heavily driven by medium and smaller pipe products and which have become more closely linked to downstream sectors such as construction. automotive and mechanical engineering. Market conditions are expected to remain broadly the same in the last quarter of 2019.

In the third quarter of 2019, production in the steel pipe industry in the EU decreased slightly, and compared to the same quarter in 2018, production decreased by only 0.1%. This is more or less in line with very modest growth in the first half of the year and implies that steel pipe production is stabilizing after the 2018 downturn. At the country level, there may be different production trends, with Germany, France and the UK and some smaller EU countries seeing a decline in production. Meanwhile, output in 2019 in Spain and Italy is up from the same period in 2018.

As the EU pipe market has relied heavily on the performance of medium and small pipe products since the beginning of 2019, continued growth in the EU construction sector had a positive impact on the demand for steel pipes and hollow sections for construction applications in the third quarter of 2019. This helped offset weaker demand conditions in other key sectors such as the automotive, mechanical engineering and hardware sectors. Meanwhile, demand for large welded pipes for pipeline projects has emerged from both onshore and offshore wind power; this has led to increased internal competition in the EU.

Steel pipe industry forecast for 2020-2021 should stabilize at last year's level, it is expected that the steel pipe industry in the EU in 2020 and 2021. There will be very modest growth. The outlook for demand for large welded pipe from the oil and gas sector remains sluggish.

In December 2019, the US authorities imposed new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury ordered an "immediate end to construction activities." In fact, the order is not so much against the investors in Nord Stream 2 as against the engineering companies responsible for laying the pipe.

Nord Stream 2 expects regulators to make a decision by May of this year whether the pipeline will be able to