Domestic heavy steel plate prices in Europe remained strong in the week to Thursday November 6, boosted by the EU’s impending Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), rising raw materials offers and subdued competition from imports, sources told Fastmarkets.
Italy
Commodity-grade plate prices in Italy were stable in the week to Thursday, with bookings heard at €620-630 ($715-727) per tonne based on offers at €640-650 per tonne, sources said.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe was €620-650 per tonne on Thursday, unchanged week on week.
Last week, deals were reported at €620-640 per tonne, sources said, with some heard at €630-650 per tonne, while offers for S355-grade material came in at €670-680 per tonne exw Italy.
But one trader source said that Italian re-rollers were only able to “offer small parts of their production portfolio for December” delivery.
“I have not heard many offers for January so far,” the source said.
A producer source told Fastmarkets that the CBAM has had a fundamental impact on the recent upward movements in Italy’s steel plate market, with further effects expected later in the year in anticipation of a reduction in the EU’s tariff-free safeguard quotas in 2026.
The producer source said the remaining quota balance of Russian slab feedstock, which has been left at 2.389 million tonnes, could be significant because, by the end of the year – and before CBAM’s definitive phase is implemented – if the rest of the volumes are custom-cleared in Europe, the Russian volumes will provide a “huge, low-cost buffer to those re-rollers using [Russian slab].”
Slab imported to Europe from Russia tends to be lower cost than similar material from Asia or South America.
The initial amount of tariff-free quota available to Russian suppliers was 2.998 million tonnes for the period from October 1 2025 to September 30 2026, with 609,449 tonnes used up as of November 6.
But market participants have also spoke of potential future reductions in Russian supplies after it emerged that major supplier of Russian slab to Europe, Evraz, has been added to the EU’s 19th package of trade sanctions against Russia over the country’s attempted invasion of Ukraine.
Northern Europe
In Northern Europe, domestic steel plate prices narrowed higher in the week to Thursday “supported by steady slab costs and limited import competition,” sources said.
And mills in the region were said to be “as bullish as ever” and targeting further price hikes for early 2026.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Northern Europe was €680-700 per tonne on Thursday, narrowing up by €30 per tonne from €650-700 per tonne on October 30
Asia-origin import offers were heard at €650-660 per tonne, with CBAM costs built in, but sources said buying interest was weak.
