EU sees more steel HRC imports from Turkey, Ukraine in 2024 as Asian suppliers lose positions

Import volumes of steel hot-rolled coil into the EU decreased slightly in 2024 amid growing numbers of protectionist trade measures, with trade flows reshuffling, industry sources told Fastmarkets on Friday January 17.

Some suppliers, however, such as Turkey and Ukraine, managed to benefit from the situation by being the safest choices for HRC imports into the EU, while some Asian suppliers appeared to lose their positions in the European market, according to data from the Global Trade Tracker (GTT).

Hot-rolled coil is used mainly in the automotive industry and the construction sector. Total imports into the EU came to 8.43 million tonnes for the period January-November 2024, GTT data showed, with the statistics for the full year not yet complete.

Compared with the corresponding period of 2023, this represents a decrease of 6.77% from 9.04 million tonnes.

Imported volumes of HRC were 9.24 million tonnes for the full year of 2023, with the peak for the five years 2020-24 seen in 2021, when imports totaled 10.28 million tonnes.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia was among the main suppliers of HRC to the EU, exporting 1.71 million tonnes of HRC in 2020 and 2.24 million tonnes in 2021. These volumes started to decrease after the invasion and were stopped completely after the EU imposed trading sanctions against Russia.

Consequently, Russia’s share of HRC imports into the EU was gradually taken up by other supplier sources, such as India, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Egypt, South Korea and Indonesia, which have been offering competitive prices to the European market.

In 2022, some suppliers managed gradually to increase their deliveries to the bloc, with the difference between domestic HRC prices and imported prices having reached almost €100 ($103) per tonne.

For example, Fastmarkets daily steel HRC index, domestic, exw Northern Europe, averaged €907.20 ($933.66) per tonne in June 2022, while the corresponding assessment for steel hot-rolled coil, import, cfr main port Northern Europe, averaged €816.00 ($893.80) per tonne in the same month. The difference was €91.20 ($93.86) per tonne.

This trend continued in 2023, allowing some overseas suppliers to secure a bigger market share. For example, in 2023, HRC deliveries from Vietnam totaled 1.15 million tonnes, almost a threefold increase from 406,045 tonnes in 2022.

This tendency, however, has triggered a series of protectionist measures by the EU to safeguard its domestic steel sector. The European Commission started to impose tougher safeguard measures, launched an anti-dumping investigation into several HRC origins, and announced a new review of safeguards.

Stringent protectionist measures were also sought by the European steel industry.

As a result, in August 2024, the European Commission announced an anti-dumping investigation into HRC originating in Egypt, India, Japan and Vietnam.

Further, the Commission announced a new steel safeguard review in December 2024.

The latest review of the safeguard measures only came into force on July 1, 2024, with the introduced 15% cap per country over the tariff rate quota (TRQ) volume initially available in each quarter, for HRC and steel wire rod in particular.

With the implementation of the 15% cap per country over the TRQ, each nation under the category “other countries” is supposed to supply no more than 555,555 tonnes per year of HRC to the EU. This resulted in rapid exhaustion of some countries’ quotas in 2024, with the same trend now being seen in the first quarter of 2025.

If the total awaiting allocation (see table below) exceeds or even approaches the amount available for use under the TRQ, this should be taken as an indication that the quota will soon be exhausted, according to the European Commission.


Protectionist measures intended to support domestic prices
The year 2024 turned out to be a challenging period for the European steel industry, with low demand from the main steel-consuming sectors inhibiting the market.

In addition, some leading automotive companies in the region admitted that they were planning significant output cuts, which would inevitably affect the HRC market, Fastmarkets understands.

As a result, HRC prices in Europe have dropped to their lowest since 2020. Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index domestic, exw Northern Europe, averaged €549.25 per tonne in October 2024.

During the period 2020-24, lower prices were seen only in 2020, when the Covid-19 crisis brought significant uncertainty to the market.

Despite the slight price improvement in the final two months of 2024, sluggish demand would probably hinder a more significant price rebound in the first months of this year, industry sources told Fastmarkets.

But all protectionist measures were expected to put a further limit on the availability of imported HRC in the EU this year, and in this way support the domestic prices.

Turkey, Ukraine still among safest options
With the EU safeguard measures suppressing the incentives to buy overseas-origin coil, Turkey and Ukraine turned out to be among the safest trading partners from which to buy HRC.

According to GTT, the HRC volumes imported from Turkey into the EU reached 1.21 million tonnes in 2024, a huge increase of 85.40% compared with 2023, when imports from Turkey came to 653,311 tonnes.

But 2023 could not be considered representative for Turkish HRC supplies to the EU, due to the two massive earthquakes in the Middle Eastern country in February of that year, which affected the south of the country. Some of Turkey’s leading flat steel manufacturers are located in this region and they were forced to stop production at the time.

Besides, the region affected by the earthquakes needed reconstruction and, after the Turkish mills resumed operations, they were less focused on exporting to the EU, and more on covering the domestic demand. Turkey even postponed some protectionist measures to facilitate the imports of flat steel products.

The disruption to steel supplies from Turkey as a result of the earthquakes led to more HRC supplies coming into the EU from Asian partners.
https://dashboard.fastmarkets.com/a/5117411/

GTT data also showed that, in 2022, exports of Turkey-origin coil to the EU reached 1.20 million tonnes, a volume close to that of 2024. But despite the fluctuations, Turkey has been gradually increasing its HRC supplies to the EU.

Ukraine also increased its exports of HRC to the EU last year, with the total volume reaching 997,985 tonnes. Compared with 722,653 tonnes in 2023, this was an increase by 38.10%.

In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the nation’s HRC exports to the EU amounted to 509.934 tonnes.

India stable, but other Asian partners lose positions
Despite the trade risks and safeguard measures, India remains Asia’s main importer of HRC into the EU, GTT data shows. From January to November 2024, the volumes imported from the nation reached 1.37 million tonnes, up by 16.96% year on year.

Other Asian trading partner nations, however, did not report such results. For example, the amount of HRC imported from Taiwan was 897,031 tonnes for the first 11 months of last year, down by 27.77% compared with the same months of 2023.

A similar trend could be observed for HRC imported from Japan, which totaled 837,169 tonnes for the period from January to December last year, a decline by 23.17% year on year.

The total volume of Vietnamese HRC imported in January-November 2024 was 701,461 tonnes, down by 39.09% compared with the previous year.

Imports of HRC from South Korea to the EU were also down over January to December last year, reaching 575,386 tonnes, a decline by 38.81% compared with 2023.


Russia struggles to find export destinations
With the implementation of the European sanctions against Russia, exporting HRC to Europe became impossible.

In addition to countries and companies rejecting Russian steel exports, the prices achievable in the few countries that were still willing to do business with Russia have continued to fall, industry sources told Fastmarkets.

Russia was also struggling with weak domestic consumption, they added, which put additional pressure on its steel sector.

Published by: Darina Kahramanova
Julia Bolotova in Brussels and Serife Durmus in Bursa contributed to this article.