Pig iron, semi-finished steel products and direct reduced iron account for the bulk of the volume

In January-August 2025, the European Union (EU) imported 3.59 million tons (-7.7% y/y) of steel raw materials of Russian origin. The cost of importing these products reached €1.48 billion (-20.9% y/y). This is evidenced by GMK Center calculations based on Eurostat data.

The bulk of imports consists of semi-finished products. In the first eight months of 2025, 2.37 million tonnes of semi-finished products (+10.8% y-o-y) were shipped to the EU. The cost of these imports amounted to €1.06 billion (-3.6% y/y). The largest consumers of semi-finished products from Russia are Belgium – 857.27 thousand tons (+4.6% y/y), Italy – 550.44 thousand tons (+17.6% y/y), the Czech Republic – 534.59 thousand tons (+65% y/y), and Denmark – 358.96 thousand tons (+4.1% y/y).

Large volumes of imports also fell on cast iron – 696.99 thousand tons (-26.6% y/y). The revenue of Russian iron and steel companies from supplying the relevant products to the EU market amounted to €254.45 million (-34.4% y/y). The main volumes were sent to Italy (524,620 tons, down 27.7% year-on-year), Latvia (87,270 tons, down 23.9% year-on-year), and Belgium (31,070 tons, up 1.5% year-on-year).

There were almost no deliveries of Russian-made ferroalloys to the EU market in January-August 2025 – 4.4 tons compared to 53.7 thousand tons a year earlier.

Scrap imports from Russia amounted to 52.45 thousand tons (+2 times y/y), and procurement costs amounted to €17.06 million (+15.4% y/y). Iron ore supplies amounted to 2.04 thousand tons (9.36 thousand tons in January-August 2024). At the same time, imports of direct reduced iron (DRI) during this period amounted to 474,680 tons (-34% y/y) for €147.23 million (-40.1% y/y).