4 September 2026 – ArcelorMittal announced this week that it intends to end crude steel production at its Duisburg Ruhrort steelworks. At the same time, slab imports from Brazil are rising dramatically. South Africa: export restrictions are not keeping metal in the country. A lesson for Europe?
South Africa: Export Restrictions Are Not Keeping Metal in the Country
South African recyclers must first offer scrap to domestic mills at a 30 per cent discount before they are allowed to export it.
The balance after a decade of the Price Preference System: formal scrap exports fell from 1.8 million tonnes to around 150,000 tonnes, while employment in recycling declined from 15,000 to 9,600. Primary steel imports in July were 36 per cent higher than a year earlier. Billets, wire rod and reinforcing steel are arriving from Zimbabwe, while scrap remains cheap and trapped inside the country. The Trade Ministry puts the annual transfer from collectors to a small number of mills at ZAR 4.9 billion. Recycling association RASA is calling for the system to be suspended.
The Lesson for Brussels
Export restrictions shift value creation, make raw materials cheaper for a few and finished products more expensive for everyone. A Commission that monitors scrap exports and is examining trade measures for aluminium scrap should study this case urgently. Free trade has so far proved more reliable than Brussels’ planned economy.
Outokumpu Complains About the Consequences of Its Own Lobbying
At the end of July, Outokumpu CFO Marc Simon Schaar told Reuters that EU trade measures were supporting demand, but that scrap remained expensive because weak end demand meant less scrap was being generated. The share of imports in European consumption had risen to 17 per cent. In the third quarter, the Group expects sales volumes to fall by as much as ten per cent.
Eurostat Data Clearly Contradict This
EU imports of stainless steel flat products, long products and tubes amounted to 645,500 tonnes in the first half of 2026, 21 per cent below the previous year. Flat products alone were down 35 per cent. If the import share is supposedly rising while import volumes are falling, then the market has contracted faster than imports.
Anyone who spends a year announcing quota cuts, 50 per cent tariffs and Melt and Pour rules to processors gets exactly this result: reluctance to buy. The uncertainty was created by the producers themselves through their constant calls for market protection. The weak demand that is now making their scrap more expensive is self inflicted.
Perhaps it would also help if certain well known producers stopped importing stainless steel slabs from Indonesia and started melting more steel themselves again.
More Slab Imports? ArcelorMittal Ends Steelmaking in Duisburg
ArcelorMittal announced this week that it intends to end crude steel production at its Duisburg Ruhrort steel mill. The mill, which is currently still supplied with pig iron by Thyssenkrupp, produces semi finished material, so called billets, for long products such as bars and wire rod.
ArcelorMittal stated in its press release:
“Several ArcelorMittal sites as well as other external producers in Europe are able to supply Duisburg with the majority of the semi finished products required.”
Sharp Increase in Semi Finished Imports
This could explain the exorbitant increase in semi finished imports from Brazil. Imports of the billets previously produced in Duisburg surged by almost 4,500 per cent in the first two quarters of 2026.
A look at European Union import statistics also shows that almost 900,000 tonnes of slabs and other semi finished steel products were imported from the South American country during the first six months of the year. In 2025, EU steel producers imported almost 9.5 million tonnes of semi finished products, representing an increase of around 35 per cent compared with 2024 and even exceeding the level recorded in 2019.
Slabs and billets can be processed almost exclusively by the major domestic steel producers, which, by importing slabs, are circumventing the market protection measures, tariffs and quotas created for their benefit. The European Commission, which grants almost every demand from domestic steel producers for market protection on further processed steel products, has proved blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to semi finished imports. And this is where it shows particularly clearly what its mantra of a “level playing field” is really worth.
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