Italy
In Italy, offers for S275 heavy plate were reported by buyers and sellers at €660-670 ($719-730) per tonne ex-works, stable week on week.
Transactions for such material were heard at lower levels of €640-650 per tonne ex-works. One supplier reported having sealed a deal for a minor tonnage at €660 per tonne ex-works.
The cost of import slab – the key feedstock for plate production – was stable at $500-530 per tonne CFR. But due to the US dollar depreciation against the euro, rerollers felt more “comfortable” maintaining heavy plate prices at €640-650 per tonne ex-works.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe was unchanged at €640-650 per tonne on Wednesday.
The US dollar was hovering around at $1.09 to €1 on Wednesday, compared with $1.04 to €1 a month earlier.
Trading in the spot market for heavy plate has picked up in March compared with the low levels observed in January and February, but overall traded volumes remained limited.
Sources expect no major price changes in the near term, they said.
Safeguards reaction
The market was digesting news about safeguard adjustments, which were made available on Tuesday March 11
While quota cuts for heavy plate were not as severe as expected (see table), there was a newly introduced cap per single country over the tariff rate quota (TRQ) volume initially available in each quarter, set at 20%.
This will affect steel plate imports falling under the ‘other countries’ category. Notably, South Korea, Indonesia and India are major heavy plate suppliers to the EU under that category, offering the most competitive prices, according to market participants in Europe.
For example, the total allowance for steel heavy plate deliveries from ‘other countries’ for 2025 is set around 2.2 million tonnes. That means that with the 20% cap, each individual country falling under “other countries” category cannot supply more than 440,000 tonnes per year of steel plate to Europe.
Major disruption from new safeguards was expected for South Korean suppliers.
Notably, in 2024, South Korea delivered around 800,839 tonnes of plate to the EU, according to Global Trade Tracker (GTT) statistics, which is double the new allocation volumes.
India supplied around 470,816 tonnes of plate to the bloc in 2024, while Indonesia supplied 430,693 tonnes.
The most recent deals for May-shipment plate from South Korea to Italy and Spain were done at €570-580 per tonne CFR in early March.
Fastmarkets weekly assessment for steel plate (8-40mm) import, cfr main port Southern Europe was at €570-580 per tonne on Wednesday, stable week on week.
Sources said the move to maintain the individual heavy plate quota for Ukraine was a “strange decision” considering that after the Russian invasion of the country in 2022, plate exports from Ukraine have almost vanished.
Ukraine’s key plate-producing assets were Metinvest’s Mariupol-based plants Azovstal and Ilyich Iron & Steel, but as a result of Russia’s invasion, Metinvest has lost control of both.
In 2024, total plate deliveries from Ukraine to Europe were practically zero, GTT statistics show.
“It’s a weird decision to keep individual plate quota for Ukraine, considering that plate-producing facilities have been destroyed by Russia. Those volumes could have been added to global [plate] quota,” one buyer in Italy said.
Besides, Ukrainian steel imports has been exempted from EU anti-dumping duties and safeguard measures since June 2022 with a further three-year exemption proposed by the European Commission on March 11, 2025.
