Top steelmakers 2020 edition: China's Baowu tops ranking

International trade protection measures continued to loom large over global steel markets over the past year - to which the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have created further challenges.

Alongside Fastmarkets' annual ranking of steelmakers by output, our correspondents around the world review developments in their regional steel sectors
Right now, most steelmakers will have much more on their minds than how their total annual steel production figure compares with those of their peers, as the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on ferrous production facilities from iron ore mining and scrap processing to finished steel products and end-user markets reverberate globally. The quality, efficiency and profitability of their production, as well as the accessibility of export markets, are to the fore today.

Still, Fastmarkets' latest list of the world's largest steelmaking companies, based on steel output in 2019, continues to provide an interesting annual snapshot of the evolving geographical pattern of global steel production. In addition to the table itself, in the pages that follow a team of six of our global steel writers have provided reviews of the...

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