The Stainless Steel Tube Market
Characteristics and special challenges
by Dr. Gunther Voswinckel (ITA President)
The producers of stainless steel tubes to a great extend depend on the availability of adequate raw material such as strip, plate and billets with the required material properties. This is the reason, why in some regions in the world still today special stainless steel tubes are not produced.
The steady growth of the stainless steel tube demand anyhow encouraged countries such as China to build up the entire infrastructure to successfully participate in this interesting market segment. Nowadays China has the largest production capacities and can serve a large stainless steel material range with the exception of some very special stainless steel grades.
The entire stainless steel tube market in 2013 had volume of about 4.470 kt. The mayor segments are (fig.1):
Stainless steel tube tree 2013 / Source: SMI –Steel Market Intelligence GmbH
[First released in ITA Tube Journal 01/2015]
You can download the article as pdf:
Stainless steel tube market.pdf (2.8 MB)