The European steel hot-rolled coil market remained at a standstill on Wednesday July 30 with trading seasonally quiet. Mills were rejecting lower birds, while buyers were not ready to accept higher offers yet, trade sources told Fastmarkets.
Fastmarkets’ calculation of the daily steel HRC index, domestic, exw Northern Europe, was €558.75 ($590.99) per tonne on Wednesday, up by €0.42 per tonne from €558.33 per tonne on Tuesday.
The Northern European index was up by €3.75 per tonne week on week and up by €1.08 per tonne month on month.
“The market is at a total standstill. Trading is frozen and nothing will change in the next three weeks because it’s vacation season,” a buyer in Germany said.
Offers of October-delivery coil were reported at €590 per tonne ex-works, or delivered from integrated suppliers in Germany and the Benelux area.
According to industry sources, mills were comfortably booked and therefore began raising their offer prices. No transactions at the new prices have been reported yet, however.
Buyers were still estimating the market at €550-560 per tonne ex-works. One buyer source assumed that €570 per tonne ex-works could be workable for small tonnages. There was almost no trading in the region, however.
“We have quite a gap between offers and bids. Of course, all mills want to increase prices, but we don’t have any support from the consumption side, and [inventories] are still quite full,” a steel-service center (SSC) in Germany said.
The same sources suggested that the effects on the coil market of the implementation of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will only start to be visible in the first quarter of 2026, “if not later.”
“We have a lot of import coil in ports and in the pipeline,” the SSC source said. “There will be no visible shortage of HRC this year.”
In Southern Europe, meanwhile, Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, domestic, exw Italy, was calculated at €527.50 per tonne on Wednesday, down by just €0.63 per tonne from €528.13 per tonne on Tuesday.
The index was up by €0.62 per tonne week on week, but down by €7.50 per tonne month on month.
Italian suppliers were hoping for €550 per tonne ex-works for September-October delivery coil, while buyers’ price ideas did not exceed €520-530 per tonne ex-works.
European suppliers increased their offers for October-delivery HRC to €580 per tonne delivered to Italy, but this has not been achieved in deals so far.
“The market [for HRC] in Italy will be on pause for the next three weeks. We will see a [new] price trend in September,” a buyer source told Fastmakets.
Imports
Import offers were broadly stable in the week to Wednesday, but some suppliers started to increase their offers amid cautious optimism in China.
Turkish HRC was offered to Italy at €490-510 per tonne CFR, including import duty.
HRC from India was offered to the nation at €500-520 per tonne CFR, trade sources said, compared with the latest deals at €490-495 per tonne CFR.
Buyers estimated achievable prices for imported coil at €450-500 per tonne CFR, depending on the origin.
One source reported a deal for Algerian HRC at €515 per tonne CFR earlier this week, but it was not confirmed at the time of publication.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel hot-rolled coil, import, cfr main port Southern Europe, was €450-500 per tonne on Wednesday, stable week on week.
