Dr. Martin Theuringer, chairman of worldsteel’s economic committee and managing director of the German Steel Federation (WV Stahl), has shared his estimations regarding the German steel industry.
Worldsteel expects that steel demand in Germany will drop by seven percent this year and increase by about six percent next year. In the association’s previous forecast published in April this year, German steel demand was forecast to show a slight rise this year.
“Steel demand in Germany is developing much weaker this year than expected in April and there is still no real recovery in sight for 2025. The expected decline in market volume by a further seven percent to just 26 million mt is an absolute low point, which is almost 10 percent below the level of the global financial crisis. The weak development of steel demand reflects the worrying state of Germany as an industrial location and the pronounced weakness in investments in the construction sector as well as in mechanical and plant engineering,” Mr. Theuringer stated.
Currently, almost all steel-processing industries are regressing, which is not expected to stop in 2025. The volume in the German steel industry has decreased by about 35 percent since 2017, which is more than twice as much as in the European Union as a whole. In the ranking of the leading steel markets, Germany has now fallen to ninth place from sixth.
“For a long time, Germany was the locomotive and anchor of stability in the European Union but has now turned into the biggest brake. The new short-range outlook of the worldsteel is further evidence of how urgent it is to initiate economic policy measures to stop the rapid downward trend,” the WV Stahl official added.