MEIS 2020: Steel mills learned importance of resilience and diversification this year - GCC producer execs

The year 2020 showed how resilient steel mills are and how important it is to diversify products, the chief executive officers of three major steel producers in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries said during the keynote CEO panel of Fastmarkets' Middle East Iron & Steel virtual conference on Tuesday December 15.

CEOs on the panel Ravi Singh of Bahrain's structural steel producer Sulb, Salah Ahmed Al Ansari of Saudi Arabian steel producer Sabic, and H.E. Saeed Al Remeithi from United Arab Emirates steel producer Emirates Steel agreed that the steel mills in the GCC region managed to overcome the negative effects and increasing costs of the Covid-19 pandemic by reducing fixed costs being and flexible when problems arose.
Al Remeithi said Emirates Steel was already focusing on reducing costs before the pandemic struck.
"We saw a sharp decline in steel demand especially in the first half of 2020, but now we see good demand in the second half of the year in terms of prices and demand. In 2021 we will see a lot of improvement," Al Remeithi said.

Al Remeithi said events that were postponed in 2020 will take place in 2021, such as Dubai Expo which...

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