Stainless Steel & Special Alloys

It has become something of an annual event for me to outline the latest hard data describing the seismic shift in stainless steel output over recent years. Latest figures from worldstainless, covering the first nine months of 2025, once again underline the utter dominance of Asia in terms of melt shop production, contributing more than 41 million tonnes to the global total of just above 48 million tonnes. China’s production climbed a further 4.7% year on year to 30.5 million tonnes whereas Europe suffered a 4.2% drop from its January-September 2024 levels to just under 4.5 million tonnes.

The harsh realities for Europe were underlined by Markus Moll of Austria-based SMR GmbH during his presentation to our plenary session in Valencia last May: Europe was accounting for approximately 40% of global stainless steel production at the start of the millennium but that share had now slumped to less than 10%. There was a real risk, he warned us, that Europe could ultimately lose its supply chain. industrial ecosystem.

The shifting landscape of global melt shop production

Also in Valencia, Jianbin Meng of the International Nickel Study Group highlighted the critical role played by recycling when noting that 2023 had seen around one million tonnes of nickel scrap input for stainless steel production. He went on to urge the recycling industry to adopt advanced technologies in order to leverage all available policy and legislative support.to fully benefit from existing policy and legislative frameworks

At our later plenary session in Bangkok, Emily Sanchez of the US Recycled Materials Association emphasised the paradox surrounding recycled stainless: on the one hand, there was a global push towards decarbonisation; and on the other, increased resource nationalisation was prompting ever more barriers to free and fair international flows. Meanwhile, Dhruv Goel of BigMint confirmed that imported scrap would remain a key component of its stainless industry’s raw materials mix but that the rate of growth for nickel pig iron and other alloy elements was even faster.

As these snapshots confirm, our Convention meetings continue to be an essential forum for debating the key issues facing our sector.

Returning to market developments in 2025, the aerospace sector remained a key driver for superalloys, even though order drawdowns were somewhat uneven inconsistent. Regarding stainless steel, however, it was a difficult year for many producers in terms of competitiveness and margins. All factors conspired to dampen Europe’s stainless steel production: weak economic conditions across much of the continent; uncertainty created by the shift in US government policy on tariffs and trade; and increasing pressure from rising costs and imports. The end result was intense pressure on producers’ bottom lines as well as on demand and pricing for stainless scrap.

Economic paradoxes and the decarbonisation drive

From an environmental perspective, it seems nonsensical that financial pressures are intensifying at a time when EU stainless production is the most sustainable in the world, with its focus on scrap inputs creating significant savings in greenhouse gas emissions. It is well worth repeating that, according to Fraunhofer research, some 7 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions could be saved in making a tonne of stainless steel from 100% scrap rather than from primary materials.

And yet despite its more negative environmental impact, nickel pig iron remains the go-to raw material for many of those companies now dominating the global stainless production arena. In addition, last year saw Indonesia supply Europe with a substantial volume of
slabs produced under environmentally questionable conditions, thereby replacing environmentally-friendly stainless steel scrap.

If governments, supranational organisations and the stainless industry itself are serious about environmental best practice, then surely latest trends must be construed as contrary to the green goals that would benefit the entire planet. As I have pointed out on several occasions, the safeguard system originally designed to protect the European stainless market against unfair competition is up for revision in 2026 and, frankly, is in urgent need of modernisation.

Levelling the playing field through carbon policy

After years as a focus for discussion, 2026 will finally see the implementation of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM. The question for many producers in Europe is whether the additional bureaucracy entailed by its arrival will ultimately prove worthwhile. In pursuing its objective of penalising the offshoring of emissions, the phenomenon commonly referred to as carbon leakage, will it indeed stem the flow of imports and/or improve the competitiveness and financial well-being of producers following the more environmentally-conscious scrap route? What is certain and welcome, however, is that it will place these issues once again under the brightest of spotlights.