SSAB is a Swedish based steel manufacturer with focus on niche products within high strength steels. In 2007 SSAB acquired IPSCO to gain presence in North America. In 2008 IPSCO Tubulars was divested to finalise the new slimmer SSAB. In 2008, SSAB was the 49th most producing steel company according to Worldsteel measured in metric tons of crude steel output. From 1 January 2010 the organizational setup was changed to a geographical focus on three areas: EMEA, Americas and APAC. This was done in order to generate synergies within purchasing, inventory management, research and distribution. SSAB's domestic market is North America and the Nordic region. However, SSAB intends to put more focus into the Asian market and to capture more growth from particularly the Chinese market, which accounted for 47% of the total global crude steel production and 48% of global steel consumption in 2009. In the last year, SSAB has been hit by its customers destocking, but as inventory levels are now low, it is expected that demand will increase more than the underlying demand due to restocking.