Metinvest sees stable growth in global steel consumption and potential consolidation in the steel industry driving the profit pool from 2020, with a shift in distribution away from iron ore miners and towards steelmakers, according to sales director Dmitry Nikolayenko.
"This year has been very interesting from the point of view of profit pool distribution. There was a combination of factors that pushed the profit of iron ore miners very high," Nikolayenko said at the Middle East Iron and Steel conference in Dubai, referring to the dam collapse at Brazilian miner Vale and the strong increase in steel demand in China."Global iron ore demand was up by 2% this year (2.16 billion tonnes) while supply dropped by 1% (2.21 billion tonnes). All this combined brought to the fact that stocks of iron ore in ports decreased very significantly and we saw prices went up dramatically but steel prices were rather sluggish," he said."Of course they were more optimistic in China and more sluggish in...