Day: 11 August 2026

Polish domestic long steel prices remained stable in the week to Friday August 7 amid weak demand and low buying appetite, with the summer slowdown continuing to curb trading.
“The market is not active due to seasonal factors and vacations of market participants,” a seller source told Fastmarkets.

No new transactions were heard during the assessment week, with market participants maintaining a wait-and-see approach.

In the rebar segment, workable levels were heard at 2,650-2,680 zloty ($711-719) per tonne CPT.

Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel reinforcing bar (rebar), domestic, cpt Poland, was 2,650-2,680 zloty per tonne on Friday, unchanged from a week earlier.

Trading activity in the wire rod segment remained limited during the assessment week. Offers were heard at 2,990-3,100 zloty per tonne delivered, with workable levels confirmed within the same range.

Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel wire rod (drawing quality), domestic, delivered Poland, was 2,990-3,100 zloty per tonne on Friday, unchanged week on week.

Production at Germany’s manufacturing industries was up 0.2% month-on-month in June, which follows a 0.7% growth registered in May, according to provisional data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

The quarterly comparison showed that production was 0.7% higher in the period from April to June than in the year’s first quarter. The positive development was primarily attributable to the growth observed in the automotive industry, with a 3.6% gain on the previous month, Kallanish learns.

The increase was also observed in the ‘other transport equipment’ segment, which includes aircraft, ships, trains, military vehicles, which saw an 8.4% growth.

By contrast, the decrease registered in the production of machinery and equipment (3.9%) had a negative impact. However, new orders in the mechanical engineering sector showed a slight upturn, too, according to the sector’s federation VDMA (see Kallanish separate).

This is considered in Destatis’ statistics for order intake in manufacturing industries, which was up 3.1% m-o-m.

In line with VDMA’s clarification, the Statistics Office notes that this leap was caused by several large-scale orders. If these are excluded, new orders were 0.5% lower than in the previous month.

Media commentary has stated that Germany’s industries are proving more resilient than expected amidst an environment of economic stagnation and international crises.

“All in all, German industry has shown surprising resilience. Whether this resilience and the current cyclical rebound can really translate into a structural recovery remains a different story,” a note by ING bank states.

One of the toughest headwinds, particularly during the summer months, are the critical water levels which could throttle industrial logistics to an unprecedented degree. That factor does not yet appear in the figures from Destatis through June.

Steel distribution group Klöckner & Co achieved an increase of revenue in its second quarter, however it reported a loss due to an impairment charge related to Becker Group, which it aims to spin off.

Following the sale of several US sites late last year, shipments in Q2 were 1.12 million tonnes, down 0.1mt from the second quarter 2025. However, adjusted for the sites sold, shipments were stood 3.2% higher than in the prior-year quarter. Revenue for Q2 totalled €1.7 billion ($1.96 billion), 6% up year-on-year. If adjusted for the US divestments, the increase was as high as 12%, the company notes.

It reports a negative consolidated net income of €268 million, down from income of €2m in Q2 2025, which was significantly influenced by an impairment charge related to the Becker Group.

Becker is Germany’s largest steel service centre with a capacity of 1m t/year of strip steel. It was acquired by Klöckner in 2010, and was put up for sale in January this year.

In recent years, the unit has seen changes of in management personnel. Market observers have told Kallanish that they believe that operations at the house suffered from the integration into the corporate structures of a listed group.

Before that, business had been in the hands of founder and managing owner Ulrich Lollert and his team. In recent years, however, observers told Kallanish that it had been operated often below its capacity.

Ther announcement of the spin-off of Becker happened close the news of Klöckner’s takeover offer from Worthington Steel. “It may have been a requirement, or a suggestion, of the Americans in the negotiations,” one observer speculates.

Klöckner’s has previously said the intention to divest Becker is in line with the group’s focus on profitable growth in higher value-added products and services. “The divestment of the Becker Group is proceeding as planned,” it notes.

In May, Klöckner had said that several non-binding offers were received, and that the prospective buyers were currently in the due diligence phase, however, a more recent update has not been given on the status of the process.

Marcegaglia Stainless Sheffield is expanding its product offering as debate continues over the impact of steel quotas on downstream industries, Kallanish notes.

President of Marcegaglia Stainless Sheffield, Liam Bates says in a published online commentary that the company’s track record across Europe and the US shows its ability to supply the sector. He argues that the impact of UK stainless steel long product quotas is not as severe as some predict, and that a practical solution exists. The UK market for stainless long products was previously estimated at 33,000 tonnes, but following the latest government review, two product codes not produced domestically were removed, reducing the effective market size to 30,000t.

The government also raised tariff-free quotas to 20,000t/year, meaning that for every tonne of domestic production, approximately two tonnes can still be imported without tariffs.

“Most stakeholders agree that standard products make up most of the demand and can be produced locally. The challenge is that a significant proportion of UK stainless steel distribution is owned, wholly or partly, by European bar mills or their parent groups. For many years, these businesses have supplied the UK market from their European production base and understandably want to protect this position. However, trade policy is now changing buying patterns across the UK, EU and US alike,” Bates says.

“As a result, sourcing strategies will need to [change] and the UK cannot be an exception,” Bates adds. He argues that even in a worst-case scenario, the average tariff impact across the market equates to around 17% if every tonne is imported, and that this implies no change in buying behaviour.

The most practical solution, he argues, is for importers to source a greater share of standard material from British producers while continuing to import specialist grades that are less readily available domestically. A relatively small shift in volume towards domestic standards would create capacity for specialty products to continue flowing freely, he concludes.

Marcegaglia Stainless is expanding capacity in Northern Europe and broadening its long products range in its Fagersta facility in Sweden while also investing in its Sheffield facility in the UK. The Sheffield melt shop will be idled between 3 July and 15 August for the installation of a new furnace to produce billets and slabs. A portion of billets produced in Sheffield will be sent to Sweden for re-rolling for the European market, while billets and slabs produced in the UK will remain in the country (see Kallanish passim).