The EU’s incoming measures impacting steel imports will create a significant additional burden that could put some smaller importers out of business, said speakers at the EUROMETAL Steel Trade Day in Düsseldorf.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Measures (CBAM) as well as the steel safeguard replacement regime will be big challenges many companies are not prepared to take, noted Gabriel Rozenberg of consultancy Cbamboo. There are many trading companies that import at least 100,000 tonnes/year using a small team, which however may be insufficient to deal with the complexity of CBAM, he said.
A similar idea was touched by Yuriy Rudyuk of law firm Van Bael & Bellis. “It will be more difficult for smaller companies to continue in this environment,” Kallanish heard him say at the conference. During the panel discussion concluding the event, meanwhile, Robert Kay of Ferona predicted that “the market may become bigger for a smaller number of players”.
Apart from the financial risk, it is the extra paper work that might require additional manpower to cope with. Rozenberg noted that only a minority of traders have so far even applied for the certification they need to keep importing under CBAM, a step that needs to be taken before April next year.
In the discussion following Rozenberg’s presentation, EUROMETAL’s former director general, George Kirps, pondered how a company can account for unknown CBAM charges, and make these acceptable for an auditor. Rozenberg replied that “you need to make a provision against your future CBAM charge; I don’t know if that is acceptable for an auditor”.
2026, especially, “will be a mess”, as there will be no verified emissions data available yet, Rozenberg noted. “For 12 months you will be in a kind of Lalaland,” he added.
Christian Koehl Germany
