Sales of semi-finished steel products at Russia's largest steelmaker, Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), dropped by 8% year on year in the second quarter of 2019 to 1.52 million tonnes, the company said this week.
Slab sales totaled 1.51 million tonnes in the April-June period, down by 14% compared with the second quarter of 2018.Of this figure 577,000 tonnes were sold to third parties, down by 8,7% year on year."Sales of semi-finished steel went down due to lower slab deliveries to the market following the shift to finished steel [and] coupled with the decrease in total steel output," the company said.Steel output at NLMK fell 9% year on year to 3.99 million tonnes , driven by upgrades to blast furnace and blast oxygen furnace operations at NLMK Lipetsk in the west of the country, and a decrease in steel output at NLMK Russia Long facilities in central Russia due to low demand for steel billet in the export market.Fastmarkets price assessment for CIS slab exports averaged $458,56 per tonne fob Black Sea in...