The institute changed its estimates for domestic steel shipments to 18.89 million tonnes this year, 0.5% higher than 18.8 million tonnes last year. This reverses a forecast made on October 1 of 18.22 million tonnes, down by 3.1% from 2019.
“What happened is that customers which usually order 1,000 tonnes would ask for three, four times those volumes,” Aço Brasil executive president Marco Polo de Mello Lopes said in a press conference on Friday. “They engaged in restocking when companies reopened from Covid-19-related restrictions.”
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