The steel value chain of Latin America increased its trade deficit with Turkey by 55% in 2013. This is mainly due to a drop in the revenues generated by raw material’s exports and of the increase in finished steel imports.

These are some of the conclusions of the recently published Latin America Turkey Foreign Trade Year book, a study conducted by Alacero, the Latin American Steel Association that was rooted in the interest of the regional industry in understanding the increasing importance of Latin America as a preferred exports destination for the Turkish steel sector.

In 2013, Turkey exported 1.26 million tonnes of finished steel to Latin America. This volume was 1% smaller than 2012, a year that registered a high increase of 20% versus 2011, growing from 1.06 to 1.27 million tonnes of finished steel. Among 2013 exports to Latin America, rebar represented 71% of the flow.

Latin America represents little less than 5% of the global finished steel consumption. However, in 2013 it accounted for 9% of the total finished steel exports of Turkey which clearly states how attractive the region has turned for this country.

This fact is more evident when long steel is considered, since these products concentrate almost 100% of the trade flow from Turkey to the region. Latin America imported about 6 million tonnes of long steel products from all over the world in 2013; 20% of these came from Turkey. Turkish products share in the construction market can also noticed in its exports to the region of steel profiles and constructive parts (included in Chapter 73 of the ASC), although with very reduced volumes.

The main destinations for Turkish products were Brazil (that received 351,780 tonnes in 2013), Peru (287,025 tonnes) and Central America (232,853 tonnes). The rest of the countries received less than 90,000 tonnes. However, it is worth noticing that Turkish products arrived to all countries in Latin America.

In the case of steel containing products (steel indirect trade), the trade relationship between both markets is not very important and shows an equilibrated trade balance in terms of volume. Turkey is a net importer of Latin American raw materials for steel production. In 2013, it imported almost 10 million tons of these products: 7 million tons of coal from Colombia and 3 million tons of iron ore form Brazil.