[ferro-alloys.com]South Korea's production of automobiles fell 2.1% year on year to 4.02 million in 2018, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Friday.

The decline was attributed to the closure of GM Korea's plant in Gunsan in May, which had a production capacity of 260,000 units/year.

The country produced 356,940 units in December, up 24.2% year on year, the data showed.

Automobile exports in 2018 totaled 2.45 million units, down 3.2% on year, due to poor demand from the Middle East and Central and South America, the ministry said.

Domestic sales totaled 1.81 million units in 2018, up 1.1% on year, including imports of 280,860 units, up 12% on year.

Demand was seen for sports utility vehicles, but sales of domestically-produced cars edged down 0.7% to 1.53 million units as demand for other types of vehicles lost ground, the ministry said.

Automotive steel is a major sales segment for South Korean steelmakers such as Posco, which sold about 91 million mt of such steel in 2017 and plans to raise its sales volume to about 120 million mt/year by 2025.

Hyundai Steel produces about 5 million mt/year of cold-rolled automotive steel,which is supplied to local automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors.

(S&P Global Platts)

• [Editor:王可]