European buyers have continued to book limited volumes to fill gaps in portfolios avoiding restocking of bigger tonnages.
“The market is slow, mills need to fill order books but they are also not ready to drop the prices as that would not help with the demand issues,” a distributor said.
Platts assessed domestic prices for hot-rolled coil in Northwest Europe stable on the day at Eur630/mt ex-works Ruhr on June 3.
Tradable values have been reported at Eur620-640/mt ex-works Ruhr.
Platts assessed domestic prices for hot-rolled coil in South Europe at Eur625/mt ex-works Italy on June 3, also stable on the day.
Market participants estimated tradable values at Eur620-630/mt ex-works Italy.
Some sources believe that recently proposed changes to the safeguard measures might make buyers more interested in the domestic coil instead of import from Asia and to trigger the domestic offer rise in the EU.
The European Commission announced May 30 that it is considering a 15% cap for a single country over the Tariff Rate Quota volume initially available in each quarter. Sources said that this would create problems for the buyers, who would either keep booked materials at the port or find other buyers in Africa or Middle east and might also pick up material from European mills if needed.
