Day: 20 February 2026

The European heavy plate market traded sideways in the week to 20 February, with project-based ordering underpinning longer-term support for the market, and interesting dynamics on input slab purchasing.

In North Europe, heavy plate price indications clustered around EUR750/t ex-works for s235 grade, and at around EUR800/t delivered for s355 grade. Offers for s235 grade were generally heard in closer proximity to the settlement price, while offers for s355 ex-Germany and Austria ranged between EUR830-880/t delivered. Offers from Central Europe were said to be targeting the same EUR800/t delivered price, generally considered the tradable level for s355 grade into Germany at present.

Import offers were heard to Antwerp at EUR780/t DDP ex-India for s355 grade, and to the Italian market at EUR630-640/t CFR ex-India for s275 grade.

The Italian market appears similarly stable to North Europe, as reported by both buy- and sell-side sources. Deals for spot volumes were heard in a range of EUR710-730/t ex-works, and project-based deals at around EUR750/t ex-works. Project buyers are requesting extended lead times into the final quarter of 2027, supporting producers but doing little to fill immediate orderbooks.

That said, near-term demand wasn’t viewed as too much of an issue, with activity described as “ongoing – but not fantastic,” by an Italian trader.

Indications for input slab costs for Italian re-rollers were reported stable at around $510/t CFR from India; Chinese material is currently unavailable due to the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday, but exporters are expected to return to the market with prices of around $550/t CFR Italy.

Late in the week, McCloskey reported that a single European buyer present across Europe had ordered over 300,000t of slab ex-Brazil –the majority of slab available in the Brazilian spot market – leaving almost no volumes to other buyers, including re-rollers that do not have their own semi-finished steel production.

Market participants speculated as to the motivations of the buyer, highlighting the comparatively low-risk associated with Brazilian slab imports under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), due to their competitive default values relative to other exporting origins.

As an example, a single ton of slab imported under default values from Indonesia, would threaten a CBAM cost at a 1,700% premium to Brazilian costs of around EUR30/t, or a 400% premium to Chinese, or Russian origin.

Norwegian-UK green steel producer Blastr is among bidders to acquire Speciality Steels UK (SSUK), formerly owned by Liberty Steel, according to reports in the UK media. 

In August last year, the High Court placed SS UK Limited into compulsory liquidation.

Reports also suggest Blastr is considering relocating its holding company to the UK from Norway.

SSUK has plants in Rotherham and Stocksbridge. The Rotherham site is equipped with two electric-arc furnaces (EAFs) with a total annual capacity of 1.1 mt of liquid steel, according to the website of the past owner Liberty Steel UK.

Blastr currently does not have any production capacity and in 2023 the company announced a greenfield project to produce up to 2.5 mt of carbon-reduced flat steel in Inkoo, Finland. Among other installations, the steelmaker planned to build a pelletizing plant in the UK to produce around 6 mt/yr of DR-grade pellets.

To learn more about decarbonisation projects in Europe and globally – check Global Green Steel Profile.

Blastr will produce ultra-low CO2 steel, with emissions up to 90% lower than conventional steel for scopes 1 to 3, the company states on its website. The company also provides an estimate of the CO2 intensity of conventional steel at 2.6 t of CO2 per tonne of steel, meaning the green steel of the new plant could have a CO2 footprint as low as 0.26 tCO2/ts

Arabian Gulf Steel Industries (AGSI), headquartered in the UAE, and 7 Steel UK, low-carbon steel producers were also identified as bidders for SSUK. 7 Steel UK acquired 100% of Celsa Steel UK and Celsa Nordic from Spanish company Celsa Group in 2024.

Blastr’s spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

ArcelorMittal has increased domestic coil offers by EUR50/t compared to previous offers, market sources told McCloskey on 17 February. 

The new target prices for May shipment were reported at EUR750/t delivered for hot-rolled coil, at EUR880/t delivered for cold-rolled coil and at EUR870/t delivered for hot-dipped galvanized coil. The steelmaker had previously increased offers by EUR50/t in January and by EUR30-40/t in December.

Several market sources reported the new offers have already been sent to buyers, while some market participants said they were yet to receive official offers, but that sales representatives of the steelmaker confirmed the intent to increase offers to the aforementioned levels.

Sources were somewhat bemused by the higher offer levels given the previous target prices were reportedly not achieved in deals they said.

McCloskey assessed domestic prices for HRC in Northwest Europe at EUR655/t ex-works on 13 February, based on a few deals and offers heard at EUR640-670/t ex-works.

At the beginning of the week, some sources reported transactions for domestic HRC around EUR690-700/t delivered, but the information was not widely confirmed in the market, and some integrated mills were reported giving offers at around EUR645/t ex-works.

The upbeat sentiment of January has turned gloomier in February due to lack of real demand recovery. In addition, concerns have grown the domestic price rise and growing protectionism in steel imports will open the door for the import of steel containing goods into the EU.

And while the European authorities are planning to address this issue, some market participants believe that any remedies would not be introduced in a timely manner.

While these concerns are acknowledged by both buyers and sellers in Europe, the majority of sources remain bullish in the price outlook, although questioning the pace of the current price hike.

The introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2026 and the anticipated reduction of import steel quotas by 47% has already made European buyers more cautious regarding importing steel. As a result, domestic mills are expected to grow market share, replacing overseas material and somewhat offsetting the effects of the lack of real demand improvements.

A representative for the European Commission suggested that a proposed suspension clause for the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is unlikely to be implemented in its current form, as stated in an industry webinar 18 February, alluding to backlash that the provision undermines operational certainties. 

The webinar was hosted by the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, on the topic of CBAM readiness and preparatory best practices, featuring speakers from the European Commission and CBAM software platform and consultancy, CBAMBOO.

Article 27a was presented as an inserted amendment to the CBAM regulation as part of the Commission’s CBAM extension proposal in December, and would authorize the Commission to remove goods from the scope of the regulation, potentially with retroactive effect, “[w]here the Commission, taking into account the relevant evidence, considers that the inclusion of a good […] causes severe harm to the Union internal market due to serious and unforeseen circumstances related to the impact on the prices of goods.”

Martin Becker, the Deputy Head of Unit of the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) responsible for CBAM, stated that Article 27a was “very unlikely” to be implemented in its proposed form by EU co-legislators, clarifying that the intention of the measure was to protect against “truly extraordinary” circumstances such as “war or a pandemic,” rather than the more general inflationary effect of the regulation on the EU market.

Becker’s comments were in response to speaker Gabriel Rozenberg, CEO of CBAMBOO, questioning the logic of embedding a retroactive suspension clause into a framework that has already been plagued by myriad uncertainties and delays.

While the steel manufacturing sector has not been as visible as other sectors in calling for a suspension of CBAM for steel goods, instead preferring to pressure for a broadened and more immediate extension to downstream steel-consuming imports, visible weaknesses in the framework could threaten to undermine companies’ willingness to invest in CBAM preparedness.

Pauline Miquel, Policy and Research Lead at CBAMBOO, spoke with McCloskey to clarify further:

“It’s great to hear the Commission clarify the intentions behind Article 27a and put to rest a lot of the speculation we have witnessed in the markets as a result of the uncertainties. Clarification on the legislative process was sorely needed.

“Fertilizer importers in particular have been extremely hesitant to engage in any kind of international transactions, and in some cases the noise has resulted in importers assuming that this clause is already in effect, when in reality we are still just at the proposal stage. This also touches on decarbonization investments, as producers globally are obviously unwilling to commit at scale if policy change will later invalidate their efforts.”

Ahead of last week’s European Industrial Summit in Antwerp, industry organizations including the Business for CBAM Coalition “represent[ing] industrial champions investing in clean hydrogen, ammonia, steel, and fertilizers both within and outside the European Union” singed a joint letter calling on the European Commission to remove Article 27a on similar grounds of operational and investment certainty.

ArcelorMittal recently confirmed intentions to proceed with their decarbonization investments at their Dunkirk plant (though at a reduced scale of development of only a single EAF, and no direct-reduced iron facilities), directly attributing the investment decision to CBAM’s improvement to the outlook for domestic industrial competitiveness.

Separately, Becker also addressed the delay to the drafting and official publication of relevant implementing acts, admitting that the drafting process had been more complex than anticipated, describing the context of uncertainty as “very bad” for European importers. The latest of the implementing acts on CBAM’s technical application (concerning the default values) was published in the EU’s Official Journal on the very last day of 2025, giving importers the minimum possible notice on official calculation metrics for their CBAM costs.

The regulatory delays were primarily caused by issues with the creation of the Commission’s default emissions values dataset – especially as relates to the iron and steel sector – which were consolidated from global public databases using a model designed by the Joint Research Centre.

The default values – both as embedded into official EU legislation and published in an excel file on the Commission’s CBAM webpages – contain errors, such as for steel imports from North Macedonia and Taiwan, China which Becker said would be fixed as soon as possible, though the legislative design of the regulation presents difficulties in how best to correct the values. Becker also stated that no substantive changes would be made to the default values at said time, as a result of engagement with industry stakeholders.

German environment minister Carsten Schneider has called on carmakers to source their input materials from domestic producers.

“We should expect more patriotism from the automotive groups for their home location,” he told daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. With domestic, Schneider is referring in particular to Germany, but also to the larger European Union, Kallanish understands. “In Europe, we should prefer purchasing from European suppliers,” he is quoted as saying.

He added that Germany needs a functional steel industry of its own, to be independent and strong. He dismissed proposals to relocate the upstream phases of steel production to offshore places like Saudi Arabia and have only processing and refinement done in Germany.

“I favour lead markets for steel made from green hydrogen,” he said and expressed regret that carmakers are still reserved in that respect. He proposed that plug-in hybrid cars could offset their higher emissions if low-emission steel is used in their assembly. He noted this is the German position in Brussels, and “I am aware that not everybody in the industry likes that”.

German car production fell by 9% on-year in January to some 306,000 passenger cars, partly due to there being one fewer working day than last year. However, registrations of fully and partially electric cars rose by almost 23% to just over 64,000 units, according to carmakers federation VDA.

The UK’s Trade Remedy Authority is recommending that the tariff-rate quota on category 12A products – alloy merchant bars and light sections – be varied following a review, Kallanish reports.

This comes following a review requested by the Confederation of British Metalforming (CBM), alleging a change in circumstances with “no current viable domestic production” of the products.

Data in the Statement of Intended Final Determination show trade flows of the product category have changed since 2017/18. Total import volume has “massively” increased, led by a significant rise in the quantity of goods imported from Spain and Poland, while imports from nearly all other sources have decreased significantly.

The period of investigation for the review was 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025. During this time, there was a 62% increase in volume to 94,009 tonnes versus June 2017-2018.

Much of the review focuses on the status of Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), amid claims production of goods in the scope ceased production in 2025. SSUK, registered as an interested party, said it has the capabilities to produce these goods but did not provide evidence supporting this, nor addressed the allegations of mothballing at the Rotherham site.

The review notes the winding up and appointment of the Official Receiver for SSUK in August 2025.

Several downstream importers registered to the case, including Solid Swivel, Cooper and Turner, and Tinsley Bridge, stated they attempted to procure category 12A products during the POI from SSUK and were unsuccessful.

While the TRA does consider this to be a change in circumstance, it also says “there is sufficient evidence that UK producers have not ceased production of category 12A goods, and we therefore do not have the legal power to revoke the TRQ for category 12A,” following submissions by 7 Steel and British Steel.

“We have therefore concluded that the safeguard measure is appropriate to allow downstream users of category 12A products to purchase imports without a significant risk of incurring the out-of-quota safeguarding duty, and therefore the amount of tariff rate quota is appropriate for domestic market conditions,” it adds.

The TRA intends to recommend a varying of the allocation of the quota such that it applies only to category 12A goods produced in the UK during the POI. This would see the measure varied to no longer allocate imports of the following commodity codes to the TRQ for category 12A: 7228 3041 00; 7228 3061 00; 7228 3069 00; 7228 3020 00; 7228 3070 00; 7228 6020 00.

The safeguard measure should be varied to only allocate imports of the following commodity codes to the TRQ for category 12A: 7228 3089 00; 7228 7010 00.

Several European country leaders are urging the European Commission to review the ETS system, Kallanish learns.

Italy’s president Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Belgian’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever as well as several other country leaders held an informal meeting last week in Alden Biesen, Belgium, to discuss European competitiveness. The focus of their meeting was regulatory simplification, a reduction of energy prices as well as trade policies.

Meloni has called for a rapid revision of the ETS mechanism and a stop to the “financial speculation” behind the system, she has reportedly told the press on the sidelines of the informal meeting.

Amongst other measures to relaunch the European industry Meloni states that one of the main issues is the energy costs and the revision of other systems such as CBAM is necessary for Europe’s industrial relaunch.

“For our country, where unlike in the rest of Europe natural gas-fired generation is the main source of electricity production, the distortion created by the ETS system is particularly significant. The specific nature of our energy mix, combined with the ETS framework introduced in Brussels, has resulted in Italy having the highest electricity prices in Europe for too long,” Antonio Gozzi, president of steel producers’ association Federacciai says in a note obtained by Kallanish.

“This has forced the government to introduce protection measures for energy-intensive consumers, who are fully exposed to the unsustainable price gap compared with their counterparts in France and Germany. Now that the issue has formally been raised at EU level, it will be essential to follow the dossier closely and consistently, in the interest of national competitiveness and the coherence of European energy policies,” he adds.

Gozzi says that for the first time, the issue of ETS shortcomings has been placed at the centre of the political debate in Brussels.

Commission President von der Leyen has outlined the actions needed to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, speaking at the Parliament plenary session, the Antwerp European Industry Summit and at an informal leaders’ meeting in Alden Biesen. “We have the second-largest economy in the world, but we are driving it with the handbrake on,” she says in her statement following the informal retreat obtained by Kallanish.

“To the next European Council, I will bring different options and findings on whether it is time to move forward on the market design or whether we are still good on this market design. And we will come as planned and as it is in the law with an ETS review,” she states.

ArcelorMittal is pushing up prices by €20/tonne ($23.73/t) for new contracts across the commodity grades of its long products portfolio, including rebar, sections and wire rod, sources in the market tell Kallanish.

The move follows a €20/t rise implemented in January and brings total increases to around €70/t compared with the lowest levels recorded last October.

The price hike is said to be driven by further production cost increases pushing several other longs producers in different countries to also implement increases of €20-30/t, another sections producer confirms.

The market leader’s hike is mostly driven by the €40/t average rise in scrap prices in Europe compared to the levels seen in the fourth quarter, alongside elevated gas and electricity prices. Energy costs have increased this winter by between 35% and 80% depending on each European country. The high production costs are further squeezing producer margins and reinforcing the need to restore sustainable pricing.

With the construction high season approaching, sources expect activity to improve. Some distributors report early signs of restocking, although overall demand remains uncertain, Kallanish notes.

Reports of a new €50/tonne ($59) coil price hike by the market leader are yet to reach some northwestern European market participants, but sources were anticipating an increase after mills fell silent last week.

Last week, various buyers told Kallanish that some mills had left the market after collecting sufficient orders and were not providing new quotes or replying to enquiries. “They know how to play the game, and it changes daily,” one said. The tactic is not alarming buyers, however, as demand remains weak and they feel in no rush to conclude purchases.

“Mills played a bit of stop-and-go to test the market for the price they can realistically ask for, and to avoid betting too low,” one buyer notes.

The mark of €700/t ($828) for hot rolled coil, as defined by the market leader, was not yet achieved in transactions, and yet that supplier is now quoting €750, according to some sources (see separate story).

Still, “as we [transactions] were coming nearer to the €700 defined earlier, it does make some sense to ask for even more at an early stage,” one German manager says. He notes that he has not heard of the latest hike himself, neither directly nor through others. But, “knowing how the game goes, only this morning I imagined something like this would come soon.”

So far, German market participants see the upper end for HRC at around €670/t, while €680 is heard from the Benelux. When some mills previously left the market, they meant to return with a new offer soon. This was expected to be €700, according to a Dutch manger, or still below that, according to a German source. Neither foresaw €750/t.

Nevertheless, it will not mean a sudden leap, “but a phased repositioning of the price level”, the Dutchman says. He expects that offer validity periods will be shortened, discounts reduced, and delivery times stretched as rolling schedules are well-booked.