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Polski
The Mystery of the Numbers
Katowice, Poland – 03 December 2025
November 2025 felt like a long, cold month for the metallurgy industry. The global production slide didn’t stop; it actually got worse in some places. We are down 4.6% globally compared to last November. But the big story this month isn’t just about the “how much” steel we made, it’s about the “how true” the numbers are.
Is China Hiding Something? Official data says China’s steel output fell by almost 11% this month. That would be the 11th month in a row of dropping. But here’s the gossip in the trading houses: some independent analysts are using “heat maps” from satellites to look at Chinese blast furnaces. They say the furnaces look much “hotter” and more active than the official reports suggest. It’s possible China is making more steel than they say to keep their people working, but they are hiding it to keep global prices from crashing even more. It makes it very hard for us to plan our alloy buys when we can’t trust the “big data” from the biggest player.
Regional Highlights
• India: Still the champion of the world. 10.5% growth. At this point, India is the only thing keeping the global scrap and ore market alive.
• Turkey: A big surprise! They grew 10%. Turkey is very flexible, and they are jumping into the gaps that other countries are leaving behind. They are buying scrap and selling finished products while others are sleeping.
• Germany: The “heart of Europe” is in serious trouble. Their production fell again. They haven’t hit their healthy target of 40 million tons in four years. If Germany doesn’t recover soon, the whole European supply chain for cars and machines is going to stay weak.
Logistics and Ore The manganese ore market got hit by a “Gabon headache.” Huge bottlenecks at the ports in Gabon meant that almost 13% less ore made it to China this month compared to last. Normally, this would mean prices should go up, but because the steel demand is so low, the prices just sat there. It shows how weak the market really is. In Europe, alloy prices finally stopped their long “death spiral” and started to stabilize. It’s not a recovery yet, but at least we stopped falling. The eurozone economy grew a bit more than we thought (1.4%), but mostly because of Ireland and some strange accounting with tariffs. For most of us on the ground, it still feels very slow.
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Primeore Trading (Polska) Sp. z o.o. is a trading arm of Primeore Ltd. which is responsible for handling of all international trading and trading-related operations of the group. The company is involved into operations with manganese ore, ferroalloys, coke and coal products worldwide.
Media contacts
For further information please contact office.poland@primeore.eu
November 2025 felt like a long, cold month for the metallurgy industry. The global production slide didn’t stop; it actually got worse in some places. We are down 4.6% globally compared to last November. But the big story this month isn’t just about the “how much” steel we made, it’s about the “how true” the numbers are.
Is China Hiding Something? Official data says China’s steel output fell by almost 11% this month. That would be the 11th month in a row of dropping. But here’s the gossip in the trading houses: some independent analysts are using “heat maps” from satellites to look at Chinese blast furnaces. They say the furnaces look much “hotter” and more active than the official reports suggest. It’s possible China is making more steel than they say to keep their people working, but they are hiding it to keep global prices from crashing even more. It makes it very hard for us to plan our alloy buys when we can’t trust the “big data” from the biggest player.
Regional Highlights
• India: Still the champion of the world. 10.5% growth. At this point, India is the only thing keeping the global scrap and ore market alive.
• Turkey: A big surprise! They grew 10%. Turkey is very flexible, and they are jumping into the gaps that other countries are leaving behind. They are buying scrap and selling finished products while others are sleeping.
• Germany: The “heart of Europe” is in serious trouble. Their production fell again. They haven’t hit their healthy target of 40 million tons in four years. If Germany doesn’t recover soon, the whole European supply chain for cars and machines is going to stay weak.
Logistics and Ore The manganese ore market got hit by a “Gabon headache.” Huge bottlenecks at the ports in Gabon meant that almost 13% less ore made it to China this month compared to last. Normally, this would mean prices should go up, but because the steel demand is so low, the prices just sat there. It shows how weak the market really is. In Europe, alloy prices finally stopped their long “death spiral” and started to stabilize. It’s not a recovery yet, but at least we stopped falling. The eurozone economy grew a bit more than we thought (1.4%), but mostly because of Ireland and some strange accounting with tariffs. For most of us on the ground, it still feels very slow.
***
Primeore Trading (Polska) Sp. z o.o. is a trading arm of Primeore Ltd. which is responsible for handling of all international trading and trading-related operations of the group. The company is involved into operations with manganese ore, ferroalloys, coke and coal products worldwide.
Media contacts
For further information please contact office.poland@primeore.eu
