jsw steel: Steel prices correcting a bit driven by fall in demand: Seshagiri Rao, JSW Steel

“In CY2021, the overall steel demand excluding China had gone up by $100 million tonnes,” says Seshagiri Rao, Joint MD, JSW Steel, speaking to ET Now at the sidelines of the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence in Mumbai last Saturday.


How are steel prices holding up?
We thought earlier that the steel prices will never go up beyond $1,000 but now there is a distortion as far as prices are concerned. So in the US, it is still above $1500; even in Europe, it is above $1000. We are seeing a similar price trend even in Asia. So the prices have gone up, majorly driven by supply and demand factors.

Demand has gone up post-Covid because of a lot of spending by various governments. At the same time, supply had not caught up. So there is a reason why we have seen a very big increase in steel prices. Now we are seeing a slight correction in steel prices.

So, to answer your question whether steel prices have peaked or not, it is anybody’s guess but as on date, it appears to be correcting a bit. majorly driven by a bit of slowdown in the overall demand side.

China is slowing down. Many parts of the world are witnessing weakness because of Ukraine-related slowdown which the world is seeing on the volume front. How much softening do you see in global steel demand? How do you see Indian steel demand?
In CY2021, the overall steel demand excluding China had gone up by $100 million tonnes. If we include China, despite demand fall by almost $50 million tonnes, net-net there was an incremental steel demand.